--:-- Asma Khalid: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Jeanette Jalil: This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeanette Jalil and in this edition, turning to nature to find love.
--:-- Jeanette Jalil: The person has come to the summit, so they most likely love nature and mountains. The first common point is established, and it makes it easier to meet people and for things to work out. The mountain visitor book setting people up on dates. The couple providing low-cost accommodation for older women facing homelessness.
--:-- Jeanette Jalil: I've always wanted to do something about the homeless, but it's never been within our reach. And this one fell within our reach, and we thought, well, let's just do it.
--:-- Jeanette Jalil: An unusual touring theatre company based on a boat, and how a reality dancing show first is inspiring people with Down syndrome.
--:-- Jeanette Jalil: I am very excited because I am keen to raise the awareness to put a really positive message out about ability rather than disability.
--:-- Jeanette Jalil: We start with some rather special little red books that are helping people find love in the mountains. The idea was started by hiker Thibault Moni two years ago after he found himself wishing during a climb in the Swiss Alps that he had someone to share the view with.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: So he decided to leave notebooks on a variety of peaks for people to write messages for potential future partners, an alternative to dating apps with the only algorithm being the ability to complete different climbs.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: The idea, nicknamed Mountain Tinder, has spread, with people as far away as Argentina saying they've started their own notebooks.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: Chantal Hartle has been finding out more.
--:-- Kathy: What's that shit Kathy and Patrick set off on a hike from the foot of the Wanflou mountain it's a walk they've done many times together awaiting them at the summit is not only an incredible view but a very special reminder of how their close bond began.
--:-- Kathy: This is where nine months ago Patrick discovered a message left by Kathy in a red leather-bound notebook.
--:-- Kathy: Soon after, they had their first date, a long scenic walk ending with a picnic.
--:-- Kathy: The pair take a break from their hike in a field surrounded by yellow flowers.
--:-- Kathy: They sit side by side, their arms linked, and reminisce about the unusual circumstances that brought them together.
--:-- Kathy: Both agree that this option suited them more than meeting a partner face to face.
--:-- Kathy: So what did Cathy's message say that piqued Patrick's interest?
--:-- Kathy: Well, she might not give us the full account, but something about enjoying relaxed hikes and maybe going for a drink afterwards.
--:-- Thibault Moni: The man who unwittingly created this match, Thibaut Monny, calls the project the Tinder of the mountains.
--:-- Thibault Moni: He came up with the idea because he was tired of conventional dating apps.
--:-- Thibault Moni: Choosing a person by swiping left or right on an image didn't appeal to me very much.
--:-- Thibault Moni: I came up with this idea, which is very simple.
--:-- Thibault Moni: The person has come to the summit, so they most likely love nature and mountains.
--:-- Thibault Moni: The first common point is established.
--:-- Thibault Moni: The first date is usually in the mountains and it makes it easier to meet people and for things to work out.
--:-- Thibault Moni: Moni flicks through a notebook full of messages.
--:-- Thibault Moni: One person writes that they are passionate about mountains, skiing and climbing.
--:-- Thibault Moni: Another says they're looking for someone who likes sports, metal and tattooed women.
--:-- Thibault Moni: As for Moni's own note that he left here two years ago, it reads, I climbed up here for the sunset, and next time there'll be two of us.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: His wish did come true, but not in the way he imagined.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: His partner reached out to him after seeing him on television, talking about his mountain dating project.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: Chantal Hartle reporting.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: And if you have an unusual story about finding love, we'd love to hear from you.
--:-- Chantal Hartle: Just send us a voice note or an email to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Helena Burke: A couple on the Australian island of Tasmania have taken tackling homelessness into their own hands.
--:-- Helena Burke: Richard and Jan Gould noticed older women struggling with housing insecurity, so they bought a former student boarding hall, which they've now turned into low-cost housing for those at risk of losing their homes.
--:-- Helena Burke: Helena Burke has been finding out more.
--:-- Richard Gould: When Richard and Jan moved to Tasmania's largest city, Hobart, three years ago, they decided to open a short-stay rental for women in need.
--:-- Richard Gould: The couple says the experience opened their eyes to how severe Australia's housing crisis has become.
--:-- Richard Gould: Over the last couple of years we've found a number of women who are finding themselves homeless needing to be accommodated, so we've brought them in as guests and they've stayed from either a week or some up to about four or five months.
--:-- Richard Gould: And we're starting to realise that this is a very serious and very deep problem within the city.
--:-- Richard Gould: I think the first one was three days.
--:-- Richard Gould: She'd been sleeping in her car for six weeks.
--:-- Richard Gould: She was in her 60s and she just wanted three days until she got into government housing.
--:-- Richard Gould: And we had another who had, because of a stroke, had lost her job and she didn't have enough money to move into anywhere in Hobart.
--:-- Richard Gould: We had three or four of them and it just got very sad.
--:-- Richard Gould: In June, Richard and Jan withdrew some money from their retirement fund to purchase a 10-bedroom, 5-bathroom home in South Hobart.
--:-- Richard Gould: The building was formally used by the University of Tasmania for student accommodation.
--:-- Richard Gould: The couple says the house will offer stable, low-cost housing for older women at risk of homelessness.
--:-- Richard Gould: We thought, this really is an issue, you know.
--:-- Richard Gould: And I've always wanted to do something about the homeless, but it's never been within our reach.
--:-- Richard Gould: And this one fell within our reach and we thought well let just do it
--:-- Helena Burke: Homelessness campaigners say that private citizens shouldn't have to be the ones to take action and that governments should be doing more to increase affordable housing in Australia.
--:-- Helena Burke: But Richard and Jan say these women need help now and their project has been welcomed with open arms by the local community.
--:-- Helena Burke: Some people are not quite sure what we're doing, but once they grasp the concept that we're actually doing this to create a safe space for these women, they come on board very quickly.
--:-- Helena Burke: We're setting up projects for the gardening that I've got an architect on board for the works that we've got to get done.
--:-- Helena Burke: Builders have come forward to talk to us.
--:-- Helena Burke: We're still in the early days of this, of course, but everyone who's seeing the project and understanding this project is just a community-based, but we're just giving it a kick-off with our financial support.
--:-- Helena Burke: They'll invite their first guests once the house is ready.
--:-- Helena Burke: It needs things like the path was deteriorated, so we've got to make it safe.
--:-- Helena Burke: We'd like another little bathroom and kitchen for our tenants upstairs, so we'd like to put that in before they came in.
--:-- Helena Burke: And it's very small tweaks that we need to do, and we've just got to get council approval to go ahead with it.
--:-- Helena Burke: And then we'll be right.
--:-- Helena Burke: We'll be opening the doors ready to rock and roll, hopefully, at the beginning of October or earlier if we can do it.
--:-- Helena Burke: The couple have named the building Blue Sky House, a symbol for what they hope it will come to represent.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: To Finland now and a group of actors who bring the joy of theatre to remote communities by touring on a boat.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: Members of the theatre company live on board and dock in towns and villages on the country's southwestern islands to perform.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: The boat has been afloat for 56 years.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: Emilia Janssen hopped on board to find out more.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: On a hot summer's day, I met up with the Sjagos Theatre as they were preparing to perform their play in Barasund.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: They travel around on their boat, Emme Sele, and producer William Tigerstedt gave me a tour.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: She's from the 1930s, almost 20 meters long.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: She is a character.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: It has 16 beds.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: A few of them are a bit short, so if you're over 180 centimeters, I wouldn't recommend.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: We have electricity on board.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: We have water.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: It's a tour bus in a way.
--:-- William Tigerstedt: So how did a theatre company decide to set sail?
--:-- Tom Reiström: Director Tom Reiström also joins us for a chat.
--:-- Tom Reiström: Tjärgårdstättern was founded in 1969.
--:-- Tom Reiström: It was started by a group of young actors and artsy people in the hippie times in Helsinki.
--:-- Tom Reiström: There was this big social project of bringing out good theatre to the more rural areas.
--:-- Tom Reiström: They bought a boat and started this as young students.
--:-- Tom Reiström: The first boat was owned by the theatre and then they had shows in the boat.
--:-- Tom Reiström: But we don't do that anymore.
--:-- Tom Reiström: Now we tour the archipelago and we visit communal houses.
--:-- Tom Reiström: And the first boat was actually named by someone pretty famous.
--:-- Tom Reiström: It was someone pretty famous.
--:-- Tom Reiström: It was named by Tuve Jansson, the author Tuve Jansson, who also was generous enough to give a bit of her good moving money for the theatre.
--:-- Tom Reiström: What's the experience like actually spending a whole summer on a ship, sailing around?
--:-- Tom Reiström: It's ludicrous, but it's also so magical.
--:-- Tom Reiström: There's something different in playing, first of all, in the communal buildings, but also the people in the archipelago are so different from the city people.
--:-- Tom Reiström: They're much nicer and they just have a sense of everything will be figured out in a moment.
--:-- Tom Reiström: If we come in and we're like, hey, we have a crisis, they're like, it's going to be fine.
--:-- Tom Reiström: And it's also pretty touching to see that, oh, the locals are actually coming to see the show and the summer guests and the tourists who are with their sailboats.
--:-- Tom Reiström: We're now in our living quarters.
--:-- Tom Reiström: This is like the hangout area of the boat.
--:-- Tom Reiström: Every show from past, I don't know, maybe 20 years has left like a relic of themselves.
--:-- Tom Reiström: For example, there is a broken guitar and then there is a crocheted salmon.
--:-- Tom Reiström: Then there's the motor that nobody almost understands.
--:-- Tom Reiström: But it's an old motor that has a bit of fixing and repairing here and there.
--:-- Tom Reiström: It has its problems.
--:-- Tom Reiström: How do you not go crazy? Like you're literally living on top of each other.
--:-- Tom Reiström: The situation is that you're in a tight space with a lot of people and your own personal space is nowhere to be seen.
--:-- Tom Reiström: So you need to make it your own with headphones, with a book.
--:-- Tom Reiström: You have to be ready to solve problems or be okay with the uncertain situation.
--:-- Tom Reiström: It's basically what an actor has to do all the time on stage.
--:-- Molly Silver: People often ask what the secret is to living a long life.
--:-- Molly Silver: Well, according to Molly Silver, who's just celebrated her 107th birthday, she just somehow forgot to die.
--:-- Molly Silver: Molly, who lives in Cornwall in southwestern England, took her art at the age of 60 and still sells her paintings from her garage.
--:-- Molly Silver: And she's a very busy woman.
--:-- Molly Silver: She has five children, 13 grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren.
--:-- Molly Silver: Her daughter Penny, says Molly, keeps in touch with family and friends online every day.
--:-- Molly Silver: She gets up in the morning and she goes on the internet and looks at Facebook and writes emails and then she does painting.
--:-- Molly Silver: I think she's pretty amazing.
--:-- Molly Silver: I'm not certain I'm ever going to get to that stage.
--:-- Molly Silver: I think I'm not there now.
--:-- Molly Silver: Well, Molly has been giving Jake Wallace some advice on living a long and happy life.
--:-- Molly Silver: You're never on your own nowadays, are you?
--:-- Molly Silver: When I learned to drive, the first time when I left the school and drove home, I suddenly realised that was the only place I could be in where I could be on my own nobody could call me no child could demand anything so I loved driving from then on that's always a joy a little bit of solitude do you think solitude and having time by yourself is important for you know for living a happy life I do I do I think you should be able to sit on one side and just forget everything and just let yourself be yourself for a little while so what i'd like to know is is what what are your views on on happiness and and how to lead a meaningful and happy life well i think being yourself if you can you don't have to pretend to be another person i i've always been happy it's it's in my body to be happy i then have moments of grief really sad grief but you you come through that i think you're amazing molly what it's a it's a classic question but what the secret to living a long life people ask me and i no idea It just happened I thought my husband would ask me out I thought I do it before him But no he went when he was 94 and I still jogging along I don know how I got to be that age It just happened year after year They tell me I an old person I have to go along with that Do you feel like an old person? No, just frustrated because I can't do the things I used to do. But no, I don't feel like an old person.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Molly Silver, who does sound amazing for 107 years old. Still to come in the happy pod?
--:-- Asma Khalid: Always.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It has to have a plastic liner.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It looks like cardboard, but it's not.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It needs you can recycle or you can compost it.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Replacing the hidden plastic in food packaging with seaweed.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: Since it began in the UK in 2004, Strictly Come Dancing has spread around the world, with dozens of countries producing their own versions of the reality show, also known as Dancing with the Stars.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: For the uninitiated, celebrities are paired with professional dancers and learn a new dance style and routine every week, with the public choosing which couple to vote off each time.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: The shows have included stars who are deaf or blind or have prosthetic limbs.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: And now the model, actor and influencer Ellie Goldstein is set to become the first person with Down syndrome to take part in a regular series in the UK.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: I'm honoured and excited to be on a ballroom and not to be my own dancer.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: I like Strictly. I can't wait to get on there.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: I was thinking it'd be scary at the first time when I got on the board and I'm like, I'm free and I could dance.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: So any dancing I got left so much.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: My best partner is Nikita, of course.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: I love him.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: You want Nikita? I want him, please.
--:-- Ellie Goldstein: I love him so much.
--:-- Becky Rich: Becky Rich is a dancer and dance instructor who has Down syndrome and is part of a group called Dance Syndrome, an award-winning UK charity which uses dance to give people opportunities and joy.
--:-- Becky Rich: I didn't know what to expect.
--:-- Becky Rich: I'm nervous.
--:-- Becky Rich: But I'm not nervous now because it's been absolutely fantastic.
--:-- Becky Rich: I've gone from strength to strength.
--:-- Becky Rich: I dance to each.
--:-- Becky Rich: We get to perform on bigger stages.
--:-- Becky Rich: Then I dance to each musical, jazz.
--:-- Becky Rich: And we're talking to you, of course, as it's been announced that Ellie Goldstein is going to be on Strictly Come Dancing.
--:-- Becky Rich: What do you make of that?
--:-- Becky Rich: What did you think when you heard that?
--:-- Becky Rich: Yes, absolutely fantastic and really outstanding achievement for Ellie.
--:-- Becky Rich: I am very excited for her to be on a really big show because I am keen to raise the awareness to put a really positive message out.
--:-- Becky Rich: I believe in about ability rather than disability.
--:-- Becky Rich: And it's her time to shine.
--:-- Becky Rich: She really is absolutely fantastic.
--:-- Becky Rich: And we are cheering her on all the way.
--:-- Becky Rich: Yeah, well, no prizes for guessing who you're hoping will win.
--:-- Becky Rich: But tell me a bit more about you.
--:-- Becky Rich: And what difference has it made to your life, dancing?
--:-- Becky Rich: How would you describe it?
--:-- Becky Rich: Dancing, for me, inspired me and definitely inspirational because the dancing, it makes you feel better.
--:-- Becky Rich: It makes you feel like you're in another world.
--:-- Becky Rich: And to be proud of who we are, I'd be proud of it, absolutely.
--:-- Simon: From your point of view, just tell us, I mean, clearly, Becky has absolutely thrived since she's been dancing.
--:-- Simon: She said you were the one that first got her into it.
--:-- Simon: Just tell us a bit about how that happened.
--:-- Simon: Well, yeah, I mean, Becky's always been very confident, right, from day one.
--:-- Simon: But certainly her involvement with dance syndrome really has sort of developed Becky and her own self-esteem and confidence, but also given her so many opportunities.
--:-- Simon: Becky told us she does a lot of teaching.
--:-- Simon: And I understand maybe she's done a bit of teaching to her dad as well.
--:-- Simon: Is that right?
--:-- Simon: Well, that was in lockdown and we were, you know, very frightened, really, you know, because clearly we had to take great care of ourselves.
--:-- Simon: But Becky came up with the idea of perhaps teaching me how to dance, which in itself is an enormous task.
--:-- Simon: Is he any good, Becky?
--:-- Simon: Absolutely fantastic.
--:-- Simon: Really outstanding.
--:-- Simon: I'm just passing her a £10 note.
--:-- Simon: Yeah, Simon, obviously Becky's done a lot for visibility through Down syndrome, but I wonder what you think of Ellie Goldstein being on Strictly.
--:-- Simon: What difference do you think it's going to make?
--:-- Simon: We're absolutely delighted, obviously.
--:-- Simon: And I mean, it's significant that somebody that has Down syndrome and I think her approach and their family's approach has been, so she's got Down syndrome.
--:-- Simon: So what? You know, there's lots of people that have all sorts of different things, but that doesn't really affect how you should approach your lives.
--:-- Simon: And hopefully this might open up some doors for greater opportunities for more people.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Seaweed is already used as food, fertiliser and even fuel around the world.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: But you might be surprised to learn it's also being turned into a type of plastic for food and drink packaging.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Unlike regular single-use plastics, which can stick around for centuries, it's biodegradable and can break down in just a few weeks.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Zoe Gelber has been finding out more.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Hello.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Hi. How are you?
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Hi, yes, good, thanks.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Good?
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: It's Rodrigo.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Yes.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez is the co-founder and CEO of Nopla, which stands for Not Plastic, a company that have been pioneering the use of seaweed for sustainable bioplastic packaging.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: An architect by training, Rodrigo has always had a passion for cleaning up plastic waste and for years applied his efforts to making buildings out of old plastic bottles.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: But after a while I realised that was a lot of effort for not too much impact
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: So I came back to the university in this case to Imperial College and Royal College of Art where I met Pierre who is the other co who was a plastic engineer to try to rethink how we can package things without using plastic.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: They began by honing in on one of the existing ways that seaweed already gets used, in kitchens.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: This material had been used in the past for many different purposes.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: And one of them is to make fake fruits or things like fake caviar or fake cherries or the fake pimento that is inside of the olives.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Rodrigo and Pierre thought, what if we could do this not for cooking, but for packaging?
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: In their student kitchen, they got to work making their first product, an edible water bottle called the Oh.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: So the first product, we call it Oh because the name that people give it when this is for the first time, they make the sound of like, ooh, or surprise.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: And basically it looks like a little bubble where we can put water or any other type of liquid into a membrane made out of seaweed.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: With the purpose that that membrane, you can compost it, but as well if you want it, you can eat it.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Do you want to try one, by the way?
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Yes, I would, yeah.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Ooh.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Yeah.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: So put it on your cheek.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: It's going to explode like a cherry tomato.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: And then you can swallow the membrane if you want.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Wow, it's got a lemon in it.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Yeah, in this case, it's kind of like flavour water.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: When Rodrigo and Pierre posted a video of their edible water bottle online back in 2018, it went viral overnight.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: They got a lot of attention and funding, and soon they were supplying their edible water bottles to marathons and other sporting events all over the world.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: But when COVID hit and events ground to a halt, they decided they wanted to tackle a bigger problem, takeaway packaging.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Specifically the invisible plastic that often lines takeaway boxes.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: When you have a takeaway packaging that looks like cardboard, always it has to have a plastic liner, like a plastic film, to protect the cardboard from the grease or the water.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: It's what happens as well on coffee cups or other types of forms of packaging that it looks like cardboard, but it's not on the cardboard.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: And it means you can't recycle it?
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: It means you can recycle or you can compost it.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: They tweet their existing methods, So instead of making a bubble, they made a thin seaweed coating, which could be applied to paper or cardboard, industrialising their methods to make it at scale.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: And then once we have that in the bigger scale, we are able to kind of like convert it into boxes of different shapes, different forms.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Boxes for salads, boxes for burgers, boxes for rice.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: And now we are in this journey of trying to scale it up to have even more impact.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Because in the world of packaging, is really linked with the amount of numbers that you can do.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Rodrigo says that their seaweed packaging has replaced more than 21.5 million single-use plastics across Europe by working with some of the big takeaway delivery companies like Uber Eats as well as big catering companies across Europe.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: Their seaweed boxes can be found in office canteens, stadiums and concert venues.
--:-- Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez: It might not work for everything, so we're not claiming that we can replace all the plastic in the world in all the applications, but at least for short-term consumption and small volumes, we know it works.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: Earlier on in the programme, we met the theatre company preparing to perform on an island in rural Finland.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: So, how did it go?
--:-- Emilia Janssen: Emilia Janssen was there with director Tom Reistrum, who explained more about the play.
--:-- Tom Reiström: It's a second part of a trilogy that is about this place called Lystarö, Lystar Island, somewhere in the outer archipelago.
--:-- Tom Reiström: And the idea of the show is bringing up the local matters that is really urgent right now.
--:-- Tom Reiström: So in the Finnish archipelago, we have these communal houses that has been an important part of the whole national identity and has been a really important part for the civil rights movement, the women's movement.
--:-- Tom Reiström: But nowadays, people move out from these areas.
--:-- Tom Reiström: There comes the question, who takes care of it?
--:-- Emilia Janssen: During the break, people rush outside to enjoy the fresh air.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: The sun hasn't set.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: It's summer in Finland, after all.
--:-- Emilia Janssen: I managed to speak to Essie and Chris on why they're in the audience today.
--:-- Essie: I think it's very funny and it touches on some interesting subjects as well.
--:-- Essie: Here we have challenges here in the local community so I can see some reflection of that in the play.
--:-- Chris: I've spent every summer here in the Archipelago since 92.
--:-- Chris: It's very different, pure nature, clean.
--:-- Chris: We live on an island so everything we do we need to take a boat, take a boat to the local shop, take a boat to the theatre here for example.
--:-- Chris: So it's a lot of boat life and sea life.
--:-- Chris: You've been to the theatre company before.
--:-- Chris: Yeah, Sjögustiarte, yeah, it's an established tradition, if we can get tickets, so it's normally fully booked out.
--:-- Chris: I'm here because I have my classmates on this, so I wanted to come and see them.
--:-- Chris: Are you planning on applying to be able to be part of this company in the summers to come?
--:-- Chris: I think it would be nice.
--:-- Chris: I've been touring before as well, so it's not like a new thing for me to tour around with a play.
--:-- Chris: Maybe on a boat would be the new thing.
--:-- Chris: The boat would be really a new thing.
--:-- Chris: So I'm wondering how claustrophobic they get there.
--:-- Chris: How do you feel the performance went today?
--:-- Chris: Yeah, it was nice.
--:-- Tom Reiström: So you've been here as an actor on board and now you're here as the director.
--:-- Tom Reiström: What are the most important things you've learned?
--:-- Tom Reiström: I learned a lot from this theatre.
--:-- Tom Reiström: And I think it's brought some kind of cultural, political identity for my whole career has come from this theatre.
--:-- Janat Jalil: Holly Gibbs, Harry Bly, and Rachel Bulkley.
--:-- Janat Jalil: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Janat Jalil: I'm Janat Jalil.
--:-- Janat Jalil: Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
