 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Today, Dan Friedel tells us why local Tahitians are concerned about the Olympic surfing event. Gregory Stockle and Gina Bennett bring us this week's health and lifestyle report. Finally, we hear today's lesson of the day from Jill Robbins and Andrew Smith. But first... The Summer Olympic Games this year are in Paris, France. Paris does not have an ocean. So how do organizers plan to present competition in the sport of surfing? They are taking that Olympic event halfway around the world to the South Pacific country of French Polynesia. The athletes will compete on the island of Tahiti in a small coastal village called Teahupu. The area is rural. It did not even have a road until the 1970s. Hundreds of people are expected to visit Teahupu to watch the sport as the surfers go out onto the famous waves from July 27th to August 4th. Piva Levy is a Tahitian surfer. He said the Teahupu beach was a secret spot when he first rode the waves there more than 50 years ago. But he added, it did not stay secret. Teahupu gained fame among surfers around the world in the years since. Levy said the place has a special energy, a feeling known as mana in the local language. And the people who live there want that special quality protected. There are concerns that a week of Olympic competition in Teahupu could destroy the mana and harm the environment that surrounds it. Proposed preparations for the event included building temporary housing, roads, and even a large structure out on the water. The work called for drilling into a coral reef. Opposition to the plans quickly grew. Environmentalists, locals, and surfers joined forces to protect Teahupu's culture, its corals, and other sea life. It was too much for us. A big change, said Levy, who also serves on a local environmental organization, Vai Arao Teahupu. The group told the Olympic organizers they did not want new buildings or roads. And organizers are adjusting their plans as a result. For example, they will not be building any Olympic housing. Instead, athletes will stay on a nearby boat. Homes of locals will serve other Olympic housing needs. Organizers also shrunk the size of the planned structure, a platform they will build in the ocean. Judges will watch the competition from the platform. Some people worry that the drilling into the reef will disrupt the ecosystem and attract a dangerous algae. If fish eat the algae, people who eat the fish can become sick. 22-year-old Mormon Maite is concerned about the fish in the area. Maite is a spearfisher who catches fish to feed his family. He sells what they do not need. The water is where we get our dinner, he said. Tahitians also worry that changing the reef could also change the shape of the famous waves. Levy said, if the reef cracks and breaks off, there will be no more wave over here, it will be finished for us. In December, the worries of the locals were confirmed. When a boat working on some Olympic construction hit a piece of the reef and broke it. Cindy Otsanasek, the president of Via Araotea Hupu, called the destruction deeply hurtful. She said, in Polynesian culture, people believe gods and spirits are everywhere. In the coral, in the ocean. The ocean is considered to be our most sacred temple, she said. Otsanasek said the fish live in and around the corals, so if we break a coral, we break a home. Barbara Martins Neo is a senior event manager for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organization Committee. She called the accident awful. She said, Tahitians have a special relationship with nature. And it was like a bomb for us. Since the incident, Martins Neo said, the relationship between the organizers and locals has improved. The Olympic group is moving slowly and asking for more input from the local groups. I'm Dan Friedel. Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, is an experimental treatment that involves having an electrical device placed in the brain. The treatment gives patients' brains targeted electrical impulses. Researchers say DBS could help some of the nearly 3 million Americans with depression that resists other treatments. It is approved for conditions like Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. Many doctors and patients hope it will become more widely available for depression. Recent research suggests games are possible and more research is planned. However, two earlier studies showed no games using DBS for depression. Those results have slowed the treatment that involves a brain operation. Some scientists continue to raise concerns about DBS. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has agreed to speed up its study of Abbott Laboratory's request to use its DBS devices for treatment-resistant depression. Emily Hollenbeck lived with severe depression. She compared it to a black hole. She felt as though her arms and legs could barely move. She knew both of her parents had taken their lives and that her condition was dangerous. Hollenbeck, who grew up poor and sometimes homeless, suffered from signs of depression as a child. In college, after her father's suicide in 2009, she had her first period of major depression. Another happened while she was working. She was concerned she would lose her teaching job and become poor again. She went to the hospital. I ended up having sort of an on-and-off pattern, she said. Medication helped her for a while. She was able to earn a doctoral degree in psychology, although she lost her mom in her final year of graduate school. But the depression stayed with her. At times, she said, she thought about ending her life. She was willing to try something extreme. Her doctor then told her about DBS three years ago. Nothing else was working, she said. She became one of a few hundred people to have her depression treated with DBS. Hollenbeck is part of ongoing research at Mount Sinai West Medical Center in New York City. Her brain operation took place while she was sedated, but still awake. Dr. Brian Cappell directs Mount Sinai's Center for Neuromodulation. He placed thin metal electrodes in the part of her brain believed to control emotional behavior and is thought to be involved in feelings of sadness. The thin metal electrodes are connected by wires to a device placed under the skin of her chest. The device controls the electrical impulses sending current to her brain. Doctors involved in DBS say the impulses help because the brain uses electricity to send signals. In normal brains, Cappell said, electrical activity spreads through the brain unblocked to all areas. In depression, he said, the brain's emotional signals get blocked. He compared the problem to dancing. He said DBS seems to unstick the circuit, permitting the brain to do what it normally would. A circuit is the path unblocked electrical current takes. Hollenbeck said the effect on her was almost immediate. The first day after surgery, she started feeling a lifting of that negative mood of the heaviness, said her psychiatrist Dr. Martin Faguet. For Hollenbeck, the biggest change was finding pleasure in music again. She wishes her treatment had been available for her parents. DBS research has continued for at least 20 years. Brain expert Dr. Helen Mayberg led early research that was called promising, but large studies launched more than 12 years ago saw no difference in treated and untreated groups. Dr. Catherine Skangos is a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco. She is also researching DBS and depression. She said there could be two reasons for the major studies showing no effect. She said one reason was that the treatment was not personalized for each individual in the two studies. The second was that researchers looked at outcomes over just a few weeks. Recent research has shown more promising results for depression. A 2022 study said that on average, 60% of depression patients showed improvement with DBS. A study from 2023 said that after six months of targeted DBS treatment, 90% of subjects showed improvements. 70% were no longer considered medically depressed. Treatments being tested by teams today target individual patients more closely. The team at Mount Sinai, for example, is using brain imaging to find the right place to put electrodes in the brain. Mayberg is also with Mount Sinai. She said everybody's brain is a little different, just like people's eyes are a little further apart or a nose is a little bigger or smaller. Medical devices manufacturer Abbott Laboratories is launching a large clinical trial on patients this year ahead of a possible decision by the FDA. Skangos said, I'm hoping we will have approval within a short time. But some doctors have concerns. They point to possible dangers of having a brain operation, which include bleeding, stroke, and infection. Dr. Stanley Karoff is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He said scientists do not know the exact pathways or systems in the brain that produce depression. That makes it difficult to send the impulses to the right place. I believe from a psychiatric point of view, the science is not there. He said of DBS for depression. Hollenbeck said DBS has not cured her. She still takes medicines for depression and needs ongoing care. She recently visited Mayberg of Mount Sinai in her office and discussed recovery. It's not about being happy all the time, Mayberg told her. It's about making progress. Researchers are studying the progress patients make. Recent research by Mayberg and others published in Nature said scientists can study brain activity to see how someone is doing at any given time. Study subjects can provide data from their homes about how they feel. Subjects answer questions and send data from their devices to researchers. They also send videos where researchers can observe speech and facial movements. Additionally, patients go to Mount Sinai so researchers can collect more information about their body movements. Hollenbeck, for example, is showing faster movements as her condition improves. The data gained, combined with other information like life events, records how she is doing. This helps guide doctors' decisions about treatment like increasing the amount of electricity used, which they did once. Hollenbeck showed AP the scars on her chest and head where doctors had placed the DBS devices. To her, they were signs of how far she had come. She added, I'm able to see and remember, even on a bodily level, that I'm going to be okay. I'm Gina Bennett. And I'm Gregory Stockle. Gregory Stockle is here now to talk more about this week's health and lifestyle report. Hi, Greg. Happy to have you here. Happy to be here, Ashley. This week's story told us about research on one way to treat depression, deep brain stimulation. It is showing promise for patients. You talked about clinical trials in the story. Could you tell our listeners more about what a clinical trial is? A clinical trial is medical research studies that test if a new drug, way of eating, or medical device is safe and effective in people. Often, a clinical trial is designed to learn if a new treatment is more effective or has less harmful side effects than existing treatments. In the story, you also said that the FDA will make a decision. Can you tell us more about what that decision will mean and what the FDA does here in the United States? Sure, Ashley. So the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, regulates or governs the sale of medical device products in the United States. Before a medical device can legally be sold in the U.S., a person or company that wants to sell the device must seek approval from the FDA. All right. Well, thanks again, Greg, for being here, and thank you for that report. You're welcome. Thank you for having me, Ashley. That music means it's time for the lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. My name is Andrew Smith, and I'm joined by Dr. Jill Robbins. Hi, Jill. Hi, Andrew. Our lesson is based on our video series, Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. Here's Anna introducing herself. Hello. My name is Anna Matteo. Today's lesson is based on Lesson 30 of Level 2 of the series. It's a special episode. Yes, indeed. It's special because it is the final episode of the series. And it gives Anna and her coworkers a chance to dream about the future. That's right. Every end is also a new beginning. So listen carefully to what Anna and her coworkers dream of doing. That means what they hope for the future. And listen for the I-N-G form of the verb after the two words, dream of. The episode begins when Anna and Ashley meet, and they each share what they have dreamed of doing. Anna, where are you going in such a hurry? Oh, hi, Ashley. The nurse's office. Today I get the results from my blood test. I'm sure you're fine. Don't worry. You know, I used to dream of being a nurse. It is such an honorable career. Is there something you've dreamed of doing? Sure. I would love to be a dog trainer. Actually, I've taught my dog Dublin lots of tricks. Well, I'm off to the nurse. Bye. Bye, Anna. Bye, Dublin. When we say, I'm off to, that is an informal way of telling someone where we are going. Anna is off to the nurse's office. After she gets there, the nurse gives Anna some advice. She tells Anna that life is short and that it's important to do something you love every day. I think the older you get, the shorter life seems. That's true. And maybe the idea that life is short is one reason people have bucket lists. A bucket is an open container that can hold about 15 to 20 liters of material. For example, you put water in a bucket to help you wash a car or clean a floor. But a bucket list is a list of the big things, the big dreams you hope to do during your life. Anna asks Jonathan about his bucket list. OK, Anna. Say something and I'll check your sound level. Testing. One, two, three. Testing. Jonathan, I've been wondering something. What's at the top of your bucket list? That's easy. I love to win the World Karaoke Contest. This is so strange. I just saw on Twitter that they are having auditions in DC this weekend. Are you serious? Can you read this story by yourself? Sure, absolutely. Thanks. You go. Anna is helping Jonathan do something he's dreamed of. He has dreamed of winning a big karaoke contest. And he's not the only person she helps. Listen. Penelope, I was wondering if you still dream of being a dancer. Only every day. Well, guess what? A famous dancer is having a flash mob around the corner. Hundreds of people are dancing together. No way. If you leave right now, you can join them. A flash mob is a dance that happens like a surprise with many people dancing together in a public place. Near the end of Lesson 30, Ms. Weaver notices that Anna's coworkers have left the building. Anna suggests to her that there is something going around. When we say there's something going around, we are usually talking about an illness like the flu or a cold. But that's not what Anna really means. Listen to find out. Anna, what's going on? Where is everybody? I don't know. Maybe something is going around the office. You mean germs? Anna, you better use some of this hand cleaner. You don't want to get sick too. Right. Okay, thanks. Not germs. Dreams, Ms. Weaver. Dreams. What did you say, Anna? Nothing. Nothing. Is helping her coworkers follow their dreams? Listeners, what are some of your dreams? What do you dream of doing? Are your dreams realistic and feasible? Or are they far-fetched? Far-fetched means something is very unlikely or almost impossible to happen. But feasible means it's something that you can really do. And remember, even difficult things can be feasible. So listeners, write to us at learningenglishatvoanews.com and let us know what you dream of doing. What's on your bucket list? Does your list include learning to speak English well? I bet it does. To finish today's lesson, we'll hear Professor Bott talk about following your dreams. Thanks for listening to the lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. Here's Professor Bott. Our dream is for you to keep learning English. Thanks for watching! And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world.