This City’s Airport is Looking for a New Voice

0:00Hey there, welcome to CNN 5 Good Things, your weekly dose of positivity. I'm Cristobo Ponganco, let's have some fun. You gotta make sure you blend that sort of vibe and thick accent again with being understandable. Pac-ya-caw and step up to the mic. Boston is holding auditions for the new voice of their airport. I boiled life down lately, I mean it's just down to one thing, high vibration. And there is no higher vibration than laughter. We've all heard laughter is the best medicine, a comedian and scientist to make the case for why that might actually be true. Plus, there's some really interesting research about what's going on in the brain when we listen to music and create memories. And there seems to be a sort of structural link. Why do certain songs stay with you forever? After the break, you've probably never heard this version of country music before. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything?

1:01Sunscreen? Snacks? A stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See PayPal.com slash protection terms. Think you know what country music sounds like? Think again. This song is called North America by two artists named Jack Sear and Assassin, the stage name of 31-year-old Amrit Sam. And it's part of a genre you may not have heard before, Punjabi country music. So, I'm singing this story in Punjabi when the Punjabi story is connected with the western style guitars it gave birth to Punjabi country music.

2:01Amrit says the Punjabi country fusion is one of his most popular songs, and a love letter to the continent and Punjabis who live there. It's like a two different roles connecting. So, I'm creating that bridge where people can go from Punjab to the western from west to the Punjab. Amrit grew up in Punjab, India, and moved to Quebec in 2019, where he's been producing Punjab hip-hop, trap, and other crossover genres. His appreciation for country music began a few years ago, while working in customer service at a trail camera company, where he often spoke to hunters and farmers from the US. I used to tell them like I do music, and they tell me about how they like country music. So, I started navigating through some country singers like Johnny Cash. It really resonated with me. He also noticed something in the photos of some of his American clients, scenes that reminded him of India. I will see tractors, fields, the rural life in Punjab is very much similar to rural life in US or Canada.

3:03You can say the culture is different, the clothes are different, but I feel like the normal values are same. Love, affection, family. Amrit released several Punjab country songs, both on his own and with other singers. One is called A Turban in the Church. About the Sikh man's love for his American wife, and the challenges they face along the way. He says the songs have found fans and critics. I feel like the art is only good when people have two opinions. They are debating on that art. Either they like it, either they know. So, the response I'm getting from the people is like most rewarding part for me. He plans to release an album with Jag Sier and hopes one day to work with country artists like Ella Langley. But mostly he hopes to be an inspiration to other artists. If like after five to ten years, some new guys from Punjab with dreams, new singers, new writers want to write music in Punjabi country, that's a win for me.

4:08You can read more about his music in a story from Harmeetcore on CNN.com. The link is in our show notes. You know that feeling when a song comes on and suddenly you're transported back to a specific time and place without fail? You may even know other words. Ever wonder why certain songs stay with us for decades? Professor Catherine Love Day has spent 15 years looking into that question. There's some really interesting research about what's going on in the brain when we listen to music and create memories. And there seems to be a sort of structural link within the brain, the music and the experience become connected with each other. And some of this will be to do with high levels of emotion, but also something that we call salience, which is the brain's marker that this is something important happening right now. She's a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Westminster in London. She's also the host of Mempathy, a podcast about dementia related memory loss.

5:08To understand why some songs become so ingrained in our brains, she turned to hundreds of musical choices from a beloved BBC Radio Show. I've been a memory scientist for a long time, like 35 years, but I've also a musician and I've found that these two things fitted really, really well together. And it really started when I was listening to Desi Island Discs, which is a program by the BBC, which asks people, if you were going to go to a Desi Island, which music would you take and why would you take it with you? And I've found that people were telling really, really interesting stories about their life. Love Day and our colleagues explored that connection in a study published in 2020 in the quarterly journal of experimental psychology. They analyzed the song choices of 80 guests on the show, looking at why those songs mattered to them and when in their lives they mattered most. And one period kept coming up. They were typically coming from people's teenage years, and we found that they peaked around 15. And by the way, we have now done a whole host of follow-up studies where we've maybe tested maybe a thousand other people, and it's such a consistent finding.

6:16That people choose music that takes them back to their teenage years. So why do our teens seem to have this special staying power in our memories? It seems to be that the memories are just really meaningful at that time in our life. We make a lot of really key decisions about what we're going to do, like where we're going to live, what career we're going to have, who we're going to spend our time with, what kind of person we are. And all of these memories are very, very important in terms of reinforcing who we are, and therefore we tend to rehearse them and go back to them quite often. But also, our research suggests that it may also partly be that these memories are very emotional and that we listen to music when we're feeling emotional and memories tend to be stronger when they are emotional memories. And when they analyzed why people chose certain songs, Love Day set around 60% of the reasons were tied to a specific memory of a person or place, more so than just liking the artist or the beat.

7:19There's actually a name for our tendency to hold on to more memories from the formative years between 10 and 30. It's called the Reminiscence Bump. Our memory systems are really good at making memories at that point in our life. Fun fact, Bruce Springsteen was mentioned in this study. He was a guest on Desert Island Disks, and one of the songs he chose was, I want to hold your hand by the Beatles. He heard it on the radio in 1964 when he was 14 or 15 years old, and he said it changed his life. And inspired him to give the guitar another go, and the rest is history. So the Taylor Swift or the Charlie X-X song A Teenager Has on Repeat Today is likely one they'll never forget. And decades from now, hearing it can transport them back in time. I would say to people, if you're whatever you're listening to when you're 15, you're stuck with that for the rest of your life. Welcome to Boston Logan International Airport. If you've got a wicked Boston accent, front door to the capital of Haasel in hometown pride. It's your time to shine.

8:20This city runs on ice coffee, raw rain vision, and unbeatable team spirit. Boston Logan International Airport is looking for its new official voice. The one tens of millions of travelers will hear welcoming them when they land in the heart of bean town. Sometimes when you land at Boston Logan, it can feel like you're landing in anywhere USA. And so we have been really working hard at making the experience authentic. That's MassPort CEO Rich Davy. I grew up just south of the city, went to high school in the city, and went to college in Worcester, Massachusetts. For this assignment, he didn't want a professional voiceover greeting visitors. We decided to say let's ask MassPort users residents to see if we could source a new voice of Logan from just one of us, and the turnout has been so far pretty amazing. Want to do some more warm ups with me? We had in-person auditions last week at the airport, and we had a couple hundred people show up. That was a lot of fun. Welcome to Boston Logan International Airport.

9:20Run dog to the Capitol hot hustle and hometown pride. So our ask is that you read the script, so it allows us to compare your voice with others. This city runs on ice coffee, raw and ambition and fun theatre team spirit. So let's go! Lift your grabbing a lobster roll by the Hava. And plenty of Bostonians are getting in on the fun with some unofficial auditions on social media. Whether you're grabbing a lobster roll by the Hava, waiting in line for a canole in the north end. Head to the Gloucester for a little salt, yeah. Or paying your respects to the Green Monster like it's a sacred lemma. Because it is. Right, it is! Rich says over 3,000 people of auditions so far online and in-person. And yes, having a thick Boston accent will get you pretty far, but there's a catch. You gotta make sure you blend that sort of vibe and thick accent again with being understandable. If you think you got the chops, head to voiceoflogin.com for more details.

10:20You have until October 4th to audition. Massport will narrow down the auditions to five finalists. Then the public will get to vote for the winner at the end of the month. What we're hoping for is when you're landing here that you know you're here, that you're home. And a place that cares deeply about our city and our state. We would think glad you're here. Coming up. It was just crazy from there on now. Champagne showers. My uniform still smells like straight champagne. A celebration more than 70 years in the making. Stick around. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen. Snacks. A stapler. The new PayPal app is like that. But for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security and pasquies, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started.

11:20See PayPal.com slash protection terms. With Share My Trip from Uber, you can send your live trip location to the ones who matter most. Like Dan and Hannah who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room. Or Tiffany, who's running late as usual. And her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. Look, she's right there. She's three minutes away. Or Sam who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Some journeys are meant to be shared. Share your ride in real time with Share My Trip on Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. And they've done it! The L.A. Queens take their throne! The PayPal history was made earlier this week. The Los Angeles Queens became the first ever champion of the Women's Professional Baseball League when they beat the San Francisco Fire Bells 2-0. It capped off the inaugural 30-game season for the four-team league. The first of its kind in over 70 years. Champagne showers. My uniform still smells like straight champagne.

12:22I would have changed a single threading throughout my journey or this season. For the Queens' third-baseman, Ashden Lansdale, it was a moment the team captains dreamed about since she was four years old when she was the only girl playing on the boys' team. From day one, we talked about winning a championship. We won the first game of the season and we won the last game of the season. So it was just like the stars aligned. The dreams were meant to come true for the Queens. The championship came down to a winner-take-all game five. The hero of the game was Zayami Sato, the pitcher for the Queens from Japan. She has won multiple gold medals for Team Japan and the World Baseball Softball Classic. She is the most pristine pitcher probably in women's baseball. Then she threw a phenomenal game. It was the first ever complete game and the first ever shut out in WTBL history. And there are science fans want more. The league told CNN they sold 70,000 tickets, bringing in more than $1.3 million. Not too shabby for a season that was played entirely in Springfield, Illinois.

13:25Ashton says another season is coming and she hopes the league can eventually play in their team's home cities. L.A., Sandfran, Boston, and New York. We had fans traveling from all over the country and all over the world to Springfield, Illinois, which is not the easiest place to get to. So it just goes to show that women's baseball is worth it. Ashton has a tattoo on her leg that reads, dream until it's your reality. Her life motto that's brought her to this point. She hopes young girls watching will follow suit. I'm excited for what the future holds for a women's baseball. I boiled life down lately. I mean, it's just down to one thing, high vibration. And there is no higher vibration than laughter. For Emmy award-winning comedian Craig Shoemaker, laughter isn't just key to how he makes a living. He believes it can help people heal. He recently spoke with CNN about why. Comedy gives you hope. Laughter gives you hope that there is stress level decreases. That is a huge cause of illness, right? Your circulatory system is working.

14:25Your lungs are expanded. All of these things happen when you laugh. That's a fact. So if you're in any sort of crisis, in any sort of difficulty, laughter really is a medicine that we need to deploy. Shoemaker says all the good things that come from laughter inspired him to launch the laugh bath. It's kind of like a sound bath, but with laughter, he calls it a guided laugh-tation. It's intentional, voluntary laughter. You can meditate, you can laugh, it takes. So anyway, this shifts your mindset, all of your energy into a healing space. New research published earlier this year suggests Shoemaker is on to something. It found that laughter often combined with other mental health strategies can help adults alleviate stress. An intervention that induces spontaneous laughter, like watching comedy, he reduces scorches all by around 30%, compared to something else, like another activity like reading, for example. Caroline Kramer is a clinical psychologist and endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. She wasn't part of the 2026 study, but she conducted one in 2023, looking at the effect of spontaneous laughter on stress.

15:31That's the kind of laughter that happens naturally. When you see or hear something funny. And her research suggests just 10 minutes of laughter can make a difference. And it left her with one conclusion. I definitely think that laughter, it is the best medicine, or at least one very good medicine. You can read more about the research and Craig's comedy interventions in Don Riddell's story at CNN.com. The link is in our show notes. All right, that's all for now. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, let us know. Please consider giving us a good rating or review wherever you listen or sending this episode to a loved one. It helps us spread the good vibes. And join us tomorrow for the next edition of CNN One Thing. Take care, until next time.

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