Citizen Reporter

Much can be learned from 30 years of watching the international hacker community develop, or a decade of watching China do the same. From the broadcast area of the 30th Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, this week I am joined by internet audio pioneer Tim Pritlove and the guru of all things blinking and TV turning off, Mitch Altman. Together we discuss just what is and has happened...

As part of preparations for the Dubai Taxi Driver project, this week on the podcast we discuss what to expect inside and outside the car in one of the world's most famous cities. My guest is Agnes Tandler, a Dubai based journalist who has been taking taxi's almost everyday for the past 4 years. In her experience, anytime you get into a cab in the "city of gold"- you're in for a surprise. Also this...

This past Friday marked the launch of a campaign to fund my next multimedia project, "The Dubai Taxi Driver."  In the tradition of the great Tony Schwartz, the master of sound who recorded so many wonderful stories from New York City in the 50's, 60's and 70's, my journey will be to Dubai, to speak with a group of people that have long fascinated and inspired me with their stories and life experie...

Frank Edward Nora believes, as that now cliché Chinese proverb says, we actually do live in very interesting times. Part of his love and dedication to creating original audio content and preserving bits of audio from the past is because of his interest in what will be available for future generations. For over ten years he has produced the Overnightscape, a personal audio journey, a chronical of o...

Rabble was the first ever employee at twitter and had the opportunity to watch how it went from activist tool to massively popular communication medium.  In a world where everyone thinks they know why twitter or tools like twitter exist and are good, Rabble has unique knowledge that can explain why it exists and how things changed over time. He can tell you the good, the bad, and the in between, a...

One week since the death of my grandfather, this podcast contains a few personal and professional stories from my life over the past few months. Though this program is usually focused on interviews and issues from all over the world, its origin is this very formula: one person, a microphone, honest observations, and you the listener. So consider this an example of going back to the roots of my wor...

The shipyard of Gdansk Poland is legendary both for its well known capacity to build ships and the labor struggles that would send shock waves of inspiration to the entire world. The tireless and selfless efforts of workers of the Solidarity Movement who stood up to authority and brute force, demanding justice and respect, no doubt made a better life for countless people in Poland, Europe and beyo...

Hacker Camp, which takes place every two years in Europe, is an event where creative, quirky, and passionate minds from around the world gather to form a temporary physical community where ideas are exchanged. The areas of interest vary greatly, as do the personal stories of those who participate.  One area of interest that has long been present at camp is that of conflict resolution, quality of l...

Lamija Tanovic grew up in a Yugoslavia with a quality of life that makes today's Bosnia look like another planet. A time where values such as education, cooperation, and participation were essential. An era that would later give way to a terrible war and a dysfunctional plan to create a new nation in its aftermath.  Through it all, Lamija explains, everyone always wished to come home and make a li...

"People here are a whole lot more rational than they give themselves credit for.  They all think they are more moderate than the norm; they don't realize they are the norm."Kurt Bassuener has been working on the issue of Bosnia for over 15 years and in that time has figured out what many people inside and outside the country have not - what is wrong and what can be done about it.  That is, in fact...

In 2011 Ahmad and Karam, two university students from Deir ez-Zor took to the streets as part of the mass protest movement demanding an end to the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad.  Their protest was met by violent reprisals, mass arrests, and soon war broke out and the government undertook a full siege of the city.  Since that time, these two friends have become a reporting team, collecting vi...

The year was 2000 and on the streets of Cochabamba, Bolivia, people marched and demonstrated against the privatization of their water.  In what became known as the water wars, the people on the streets emerged victorious, kicking out private water companies and re-instating the municipal system.

Has your water utility been privatized in the past decade? Are today's water companies really investing in infrastructure and improvements? How much democracy is there in your water bill? If any of these questions sound familiar, you probably care about who is in charge of bringing water to your home. And after all the promises that came with the privatization of water systems, many cities around...

You can't windsurf, because that would be elitist. But, if you're the American president, you can drive around your ranch in a golf cart shooting guns, because people can relate to that.  As comedian and writer Lizz Winstead explains it, sometimes there is no debate possible if we don't agree on fundamental and proven facts.  Over the past few months Lizz has been promoting her book "Lizz Free or...

Tony Pierce was blogging before most of us had broadband internet and well before smart phones existed. For over a decade he has been writing daily and bringing people into his world on the busblog, where nothing is true. Through it all, he has preached about what would only years later be understood as good advice for anyone interested in writing or creating content online: keep going, do what ma...

As I have now published all the interviews I have to share with you from the journey, I realized there was still audio that I had never put together and released to the public - the audio from Tahrir Square, as Chris and I, together with inspiring friends and people who just came right up to us, speak about what was going on around us.  It was, and remains, a unique moment in my life and clearly f...

As part of the Arab Artists in a Revolution series, during our three weeks in Cairo, we had the pleasure of meeting up with the former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He may not be an artist but at 90 years of age, he is an extremely experienced observer of Egypt and the world, who is passionate about humanity and its problems. In this interview we meet in his living room over looking...

The name Tyre was one I remembered best from the days of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 when the city was bombed and that standard war-map would appear on news reports.  While in country this past December, when I was offered a chance to go down there and speak with someone who lived in a refugee camp- I immediately said yes.  But what I didn't realize until I got there, was just how many...

Over the course of my week in Beirut I had the good fortune of spending time with teacher and performance artist Raghda Mouawad.  Through her I learned a great many things about the country and its people, including details about the education system and the harsh reality for artists during an economic crisis in a country that offers little support.  We also get back into that now familiar topic,...

Kamal Hakim grew up in an era of reconstruction after the civil war in Lebanon. As the son of a Greek Orthodox - Sunni Muslim marriage, he recalls eating sour-kraut cooked by his protestant grandmother. His life was marked by all the struggles of a city of contradictions, contradictions which he recognizes in himself as well. As an illustrator, Kamal has a dream, a dream he must reconcile with the...

It was one of those beautiful nights in Beirut were I found myself sitting at a table with new friends sharing stories, teaching each other about the world, and finding humor in unexpected places.  And even after a long day of teaching and rehearsing, Alexandre Paulikevitch is a natural at all these things.  As we sat around the table of the outdoor cafe he talked about projects he's working on an...

In the early days of the 2011 revolt some young Egyptians found themselves at the beginning of their military service. While in Tahrir square and on the streets the winds of change blew away a dictator, in the barracks soldiers knew little of what was going on outside and what their fate might be as soldiers.  Would they be deployed to the streets to confront ordinary citizens? Do they still answe...

The issue of domestic abuse is a huge yet unspoken problem in Egypt.  Despite all the stories of the great social liberation that is taking place on the street when it comes to self-expression and liberty, at home women are still beaten by their husbands. Between the social acceptance and the legal indifference of this terrible tradition,  it would seem to be an extremely difficult reality to over...

Youth has long been the buzz word connecting to the uprisings in North Africa and in the Middle East in the spring of 2011. A demographic shift, we've been told, combined with economic and social conditions, resulted in a new resistence culture with new strategies and goals for their respective countries.  Tunisia was one such country, where the median age is 30, and multi-lingual, interconnected...

"There is an information war going on in Tunisia," Adel explains to me one beautiful afternoon in a suburb of Tunis, "people are constantly consuming and waiting for that next message."  In an unexpected podcast conversation my new friend began right away talking about the good news and the bad news when it comes to changes in Tunisia over the past 2 years. He also talks about the importance, now...