Doha Debates Podcast

This special episode is a live recording from the Sundance Film Festival, with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa and filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz. Diaz’s most recent film, A Thousand Cuts, documents Ressa’s work to fight disinformation and the weakening of the Philippines’ democracy. Read the episode transcript here.

Menstruation is normal — so why is it still taboo to talk about in some parts of the world? Nelufar has a heart-to-heart with her childhood friends about period stigma. Then she talks with Mandu Reid, the leader of the British Women’s Equality Party and founder of the Cup Effect, an organization that offers menstrual cups to people in need. Read the episode transcript here.

Artificial intelligence has as much racial and gender bias as the people who create it. Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist and digital activist at the MIT Media Lab, talks with host Nelufar Hedayat about how to build artificial intelligence systems that don’t perpetuate social inequalities. Read the episode transcript here.

Your phone is tracking you all the time. Tech companies are monetizing your personal data. Is there anything that you can do about it? Nelufar talks to Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about why data privacy should be a human right. Then we discover some surprising ways social media ad targeting is being used to do good in the world. Read the episode transcript here.

The public’s trust in governments is at an all-time low. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein is a veteran diplomat and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He talks with host Nelufar Hedayat about standing up to governments — and the enemies he made along the way. Read the episode transcript here.

As the coronavirus rages, 89 percent of students around the world are out of school and turning to online platforms to keep studying. That has its limits and its own set of challenges, but it’s far better than no school at all. Nelufar speaks with Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, about internet inequality and the future of education in a post COVID-19 world. Read the episode transcript here.

While confronting a friend who voted for Brexit, Nelufar goes on an ego-dampening journey that takes her from a conflict circle in Iraq to a prison in southern Illinois, as she learns why conflict resolution is more about confronting ourselves than others. Read the episode transcript here.

What do our decisions about COVID-19 say about who we are as societies and the systems we take for granted? This week, we chat with global strategy expert Parag Khanna and anthropologist Jason Hickel about the novel coronavirus, the global economy and the institutions we must trust to get us through this. Read the episode transcript here.

How do we solve a problem that has displaced 25 million people globally? Nelufar talks to journalist Marc Lamont Hill about the role racism plays in the global refugee crisis. Read the episode transcript here.

Nelufar gets an unpleasant surprise when she finds out how much carbon she’s personally responsible for emitting into the atmosphere. But even if we all work to reduce our carbon footprint, will it be enough to fix the climate crisis? Or does real change have to come from the top? Read the episode transcript here.

The gap between rich and poor is widening at an unsustainable rate. Author Anand Giridharadas says that to really change the world, we need to challenge capitalist power structures. Read the episode transcript here.

What would it take to live without globalization — and is that even possible? Host Nelufar Hedayat attempts to go hyper local in London and talks to author Parag Khanna and Ghanaian agripreneur Nana Adjoa Sifa. One thing is for sure, globalization is a lot more complicated than you think. Read the episode transcript here.

Garbage is Veena Sahajwalla’s passion. And the trash is piling up: The more stuff we consume, the more waste we create. She’s inventing new ways to turn trash into useful items — like using old tires to make steel and transforming plastic waste into tiles and furniture. Read the episode transcript here.

Is it possible to live without single-use plastics? Host Nelufar Hedayat learns that recycling our forks, bags and coffee cup lids just isn’t enough. She also talks to a Vietnamese activist who's pioneering the zero-waste movement in a country beset with other people’s plastic waste. Read the episode transcript here.

“Equal Pay!” was the chant that rang through the 2019 Women’s World Cup. Although women players often bring in more money for their soccer or football federations, they earn a just a fraction of their male counterparts’ salaries. Host Nelufar Hedayat learns that soccer is more than just a game — it’s a battlefield for equality. Read the episode transcript here.

As a girl, Georgie Badiel walked three hours every morning to get clean water for her family in Burkina Faso. Host Nelufar Hedayat talks to Badiel, who today is a fashion model and an activist for clean water access in her home country, about the right to clean water and why it’s a matter of gender equity in sub-Saharan countries. Read the episode transcript here.

Host Nelufar Hedayat’s family fled Afghanistan as refugees 25 years ago, when Nelufar was a young child. Nelufar's mother tells her story for the first time in our first episode of Course Correction. Nelufar also talks with a more recent refugee about what it’s like to seek asylum today, and how we can be more empathetic and supportive of our refugee neighbors. Read the episode transcript here.

Could you live on only 50 liters (13 gallons) of water a day? To better understand the water shortages threatening more and more cities around the world, host Nelufar Hedayat limits herself to 50 liters of water for all her cooking, cleaning, and drinking. She also talks to people in Cape Town, South Africa, about how they averted Day Zero, the day their water supply was going to run dry. Read the...

From living on less than 50 liters of water a day to collecting all the plastic she uses in a week, host Nelufar Hedayat puts herself through the paces to understand the world’s most pressing issues with empathy and deep personal involvement. Course Correction follows Nelufar’s journey each week as she dives deep with the people most affected by humanity’s greatest challenges, from the global wate...