Originally from Athens, Efi Latsoudi studied psychology and worked with a range of vulnerable communities before moving to Lesvos in 2001. Efi’s experiences and her story provide a historical perspective on the refugee crisis in Greece that we almost never get from traditional media. For starters, refugees didn’t start coming to Greece in 2015. That story starts much earlier, and many of the problems and tensions we are seeing today are a repeat of events that took place more than a decade ago. ...
Apr 14, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 59
These are the personal testimonies of refugees from Moria Refugee Camp on the Greek Island of Lesvos and in Athens. These interviews were recorded in January and February as part of our collaboration with Are You Syrious . Much has transpired in Greece and in the world since we spoke, but their stories remain current and are in many ways timeless examples of what many of our parents, grandparents and neighbors endured before settling in our communities. As the Coronavirus bears down on the most ...
Mar 31, 2020•2 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Much has changed in recent weeks since we left Greece, and before bringing you the personal testimonies and field interviews that we gathered from refugees, volunteers, Greek citizens, and stakeholders during our time in Lesvos and Athens in January and February, we wanted to touch base with some people on the ground in Greece and Turkey to get up to speed on the fast-changing situation in and between these countries. Douglas Herman a journalist and co-founder of Refocus Media Labs , a nonprofit...
Mar 14, 2020•2 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 57
While it might seem like an obscure topic due to scant coverage in the Western press, a quick review of the facts makes it clear that we ignore Algeria at our peril. First of all, it’s Africa’s biggest country by land mass, and home to a population larger than Canada’s. It’s also home to Africa’s largest company, state owned oil giant Sonatrach, a major exporter of fuel to Western Europe. We dive deeper into the nuances and into the layered intrigues that define Algeria’s history, and what’s bee...
Feb 10, 2020•2 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 56
In May of 2019, Pittsburgh resident Bethany Hallam defeated a nearly 20-year incumbent to become Allegheny County Councilor at Large. She takes her seat in January, 2020. What's truly remarkable about her victory is the story that precedes it. Bethany watched the 2016 US presidential election from the Allegheny County Jail as an inmate and recovering heroin addict. She shares her journey from addiction, to incarceration, to her inspiration to run for local elected office in a metro area of over ...
Dec 29, 2019•1 hr 48 min•Season 1Ep. 55
In mid-October, 2019 protests broke out in Santiago, and spread across the nation in what quickly became the largest display of civil unrest in Chile since the Pinochet dictatorship. On October 25th an estimated 1.2 million people took to the streets of Santiago demanding Sebastián Piñera’s resignation. Hundreds of human rights abuse cases have been reported by individuals, human rights organizations, and medical professionals. We speak with three guests: American filmmaker and journalist Joshua...
Dec 18, 2019•2 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 54
The current protests in Iraq began at the start of October. Much like the ongoing protests in Lebanon, the protests in Iraq have largely been mobilized by youth, with no clear leadership, and with a decidedly anti-sectarian focus, with demands to address chronic unemployment, and to reform entrenched corruption and rule by political elites. They are also the largest protest in Iraq since the end of the Saddam Hussein regime. Unlike Lebanon, protests in Iraq have seen a heavy handed response from...
Nov 21, 2019•40 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Since mid October Lebanon has seen some of its largest protests in years, and in this a country where sectarianism has been institutionalized since the end of the 15-year-long civil war, it’s noteworthy that one of the issues that protestors are rallying against is sectarianism itself. We talk to activist and development professional Jad Sakr in Beirut to get more context on the causes and aspirations for these protests, as well as the many challenges to be overcome. This episode is the first in...
Nov 21, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Adrien Lawyer is the founder and director of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico , an organization that “provides support, community, and connection to transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and gender variant people and their families through advocacy, education, and direct services.” For this conversation I wanted to avoid the trap of playing it safe by asking easy questions and settling for easy answers, and instead just let my confusion and my preconceptions hang out there a...
Nov 08, 2019•1 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 51
What comes to mind when you think of Zimbabwe? Perhaps a generic collection of images from the African continent? Wildlife, poverty, and despotism? Perhaps the rule of revolutionary icon and then dictator, Robert Mugabe, or the astronomical rates of inflation and illness and out-migration that have captured the scant bit of international publicity that the country has received in recent years? When I traveled to Zimbabwe as a 14-year-old the country changed how I viewed the world and my place in...
Oct 28, 2019•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 50
The Kafala or “sponsorship” system is used throughout the Gulf countries (as well as in Jordan and Lebanon) to monitor and organize migrant laborers, from recruitment abroad to their management upon arrival, and particularly in the construction and domestic work sectors. Under the Kafala system a migrant worker’s presence in a host country is linked entirely to their employer, with the effect that it’s not only difficult or impossible to switch jobs, but all elements of their daily lives from ac...
Oct 11, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 49
In this second of a two-part conversation I talk to Major Joe Womack (USMC-retired) about AfricaTown. Now part of Mobile, Alabama, AfricaTown was founded by survivors of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the US. And the shipwreck was just discovered in 2019. Joe Womack was born and raised there and now he is leading a fight to prevent its ongoing exploitation and pollution by toxic industries. It’s a story that goes to the heart, not only of the Deep South, but of America’s failure to rec...
Sep 26, 2019•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 48
In this first of a two-part conversation I talk to Major Joe Womack (USMC-retired) about AfricaTown. Now part of Mobile, Alabama, AfricaTown was founded by survivors of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the US. And the shipwreck was just discovered in 2019. Joe Womack was born and raised there and now he is leading a fight to prevent its ongoing exploitation and pollution by toxic industries. It’s a story that goes to the heart, not only of the Deep South, but of America’s failure to reco...
Sep 26, 2019•47 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Dalia Shurrab is the Communication and Social Media Coordinator at Gaza Sky Geeks . We talk about the challenges of running the first tech hub in the Gaza Strip and the status of women's rights in Palestine.
Sep 12, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 46
In this second half of our two-part conversation with Nareg Seferian we speak about the Armenian Genocide, the modern state of Armenia, the Armenian diaspora, and Armenian identity. Nareg Seferian received his education in India, Armenia, the United States, and Austria. Nareg served on the faculty at the American University of Armenia for three years, and he is currently pursuing his PhD at Virginia Tech's School of Public and International Affairs in the Washington, DC area. His research and wr...
Aug 29, 2019•54 min•Season 1Ep. 45
In this first half of our two-part conversation with Nareg Seferian we speak about the Armenian Genocide, the modern state of Armenia, the Armenian diaspora, and Armenian identity. Nareg Seferian received his education in India, Armenia, the United States, and Austria. Nareg served on the faculty at the American University of Armenia for three years, and he is currently pursuing his PhD at Virginia Tech's School of Public and International Affairs in the Washington, DC area. His research and wri...
Aug 29, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Our guest this week is a young Kashmiri woman currently living in Mumbai. Situated in a mountainous region between India and Pakistan, Kashmir has been a nominal part of India since shortly after India and Pakistan both gained independence from the British in 1947. It’s also India’s only Muslim majority state and was the battleground in two separate wars between India and Pakistan and several armed conflicts between the two nuclear-armed rivals, including one limited engagement earlier this year...
Aug 17, 2019•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 43
In 1982 the Myanmar (Burmese) military government passed a citizenship law that effectively stripped the Rohingya community of their nationality overnight. They’ve been stateless ever since, and subject to institutionalized discrimination and coordinated persecution that has greatly restricted their movement and their access to jobs and education. In August of 2017 Myanmar’s military began an offensive to drive many Rohingya out of their homes in Rakhine state, with the result that roughly 900,0...
Aug 02, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 42
For this second half of our conversation we discuss the ongoing inter-communal violence in Central Mali, the features of Jihadist movements in the region, the prospects and barriers to peace, and the regional and geopolitical implications of these factors and why you should take notice of what's happening in the Sahel. Dougoukolo Ba-Konare is a clinical psychologist and teacher of Fula Language and Societies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris, and a found...
Jul 22, 2019•46 min•Season 1Ep. 41
The Fulani are an ethnic group of around 40 million people who inhabit Africa’s Sahel region, the transitional biozone that spans the African continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and where the sands of the Sahara gradually give way to the savanna of central Africa. Traditionally a pastoral nomadic culture, they have long experienced tensions in some of the communities they call home, and are often treated as outsiders. Some of these conflicts have made international headlines recently, mos...
Jul 21, 2019•56 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Basir Bita spent his childhood as a refugee in Iran and moved back to Afghanistan in 2003, which means he has spent his entire adult life living under the US occupation. He currently lives in Kabul where he works as a peace activist and as a consultant monitoring and evaluating risk factors for corruption. We discuss the current peace talks between the US and the Taliban, and what he has learned talking to people from across Afghanistan’s ethnically diverse society. Also be sure to check out our...
Jul 08, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 39
In June more than 2 million Hong Kong residents took to the streets to protest a proposed law that could see residents of the global financial center subject to extradition and criminal prosecution in China, undercutting the delicate "one country, two systems" policy that was to remain in place for 50 years after the 1997 handover from the British. Today, on the anniversary of the handover, the protestors stormed and occupied the Hong Kong legislature. For this show we speak with two guests: a p...
Jul 01, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Sally-Alice Thompson is a World War 2 veteran, a peace activist, a New Mexico resident, and at 95 years old she just started her first hunger strike to bring an end to US sanctions and for US support for sieges that are pushing children into starvation and depriving populations of their basic needs. Sign the Petition and Learn More.
Jun 23, 2019•21 min•Season 1Ep. 37
This segment of our two-part interview with Dahlia Al Roubi was recorded on Tuesday, June 4th, the day after the current government crackdown began against protestors in Khartoum. As of this episode roughly 100 people have been killed by government forces, with reports that scores of bodies have been dumped into the Nile. As of June 6th, Sudan’s membership in the African Union has been revoked. Sudan’s military council has suspended talks with protestors and unilaterally called for elections to ...
Jun 06, 2019•41 min•Season 1Ep. 36
For this first part of a two-part conversation, we talk to Sudanese activist Dahlia Al Roubi about the what it was like growing up under the regime of recently deposed dictator Omar Al Bashir, how the current revolution swept Sudan, starting in December of last year, the challenges of weighing the purity of revolutionary principles against the practical constraints of time and competing interests, and about the role of women who took a leading role in the street protests but who now appear to be...
Jun 06, 2019•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Have you ever watched a humanitarian crisis unfolding on the news and witnessed the subsequent failure of leaders to lead, and thought to yourself, "I wish I could get some friends together and just do something to make this better?" That's what Milena Zajović and a few of her friends in Croatia did when the largest refugee crisis to hit Europe since World War 2 came to their borders in the Summer of 2015. That initial impulse lead to the creation of Are You Syrious? , a nonprofit that focuses o...
May 22, 2019•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Faisel Saleh was born the 11th of 11 children in the West Bank town of El Bireh after his parents fled from their home near Jaffa (near Tel Aviv) during the 1948 war. Those events created the state of Israel and what 700,000 Palestinians and their millions of descendants refer to as “The Nakba”, or the catastrophe. Faisal come to the US in 1969 to pursue his education, later becoming a successful entrepreneur. Last year he founded the Palestine Museum US , in Woodbridge, Connecticut, the first m...
May 09, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 33
We hear very little about the war that is taking place in Yemen, which is now in its fifth year. And we hear even less about this war in the words of Yemeni’s themselves, and far less still from those who are still in Yemen. This episode represents a small effort to address this disparity. Adel Hashem is the director of Human Needs Development in Sana’a, and organization that is working on the ground to deliver food, medical, and education support to the Yemeni people. Though the war in Syria, a...
May 01, 2019•40 min•Season 1Ep. 32
While much has been written about the "refugee crisis" coming to Western shores, we rarely hear about the long standing crises across the Global South, where 85% of the world's forcibly displaced people's have been forced to seek refuge. Hashed had to flee Yemen after his father was killed, and what followed was an odyssey that has taken him from Djibouti, to India, to Malaysia, where his struggle is far from over. Hassan is from Syria, and he also wound up in Malaysia, after his work visa in th...
Apr 17, 2019•55 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Fatma Naib won a Peabody Award in 2017 for her film, “The Cut” , which she and her team completed for Al Jazeera English on the subject of Female Genital Mutilation. FGM is a non-medical procedure that involves partial or radical removal of young women’s genitalia, and while widely practiced in parts of Africa and the Middle East, is neither limited to these regions nor defined by theology or religion. The practice is typically linked to a right of passage, sexual purity, or as a marker of cultu...
Apr 07, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 30
