Stories Seldom Told

This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book credit! “Feeling a heightened sense of my family being in peril really made me realise that a lot of what people were doing and saying and reacting to was based on a couple of things. One, a lack of experience with the groups or the cohorts that they were rall...

“And we have centuries worth of information at our hands and we really don't find time to do the sort of work we should, as individuals, to make this world a more thoughtfully choreographed place rather than one where we have existing inequalities and the powerful manage to control media and the way we think. I think we have it all in our power to actually be more informed.” Simone, a Bangladeshi-...

“When I first heard the term unconscious biases, it actually had a negative connotation to me, as the word bias often does. But after some thought, I realised that unconscious biases are actually very natural. What separates us as humans is our ability to learn from our experiences, both good and bad. Now, like emotions, we have positive ones and negative ones, the problematic ones are the ba...

“So here's the question, the unconscious bias is not that, that you got a tendency to go for the, smaller dog in the fight. The question is whether you do it to glorify and validate yourself. In which case, you know, there’s no real pure energy involved in that. As some selfless Jesus like figure, who is willing to give his life to save humanity, because that's what he wants to do.” Cyrus Broacha...

" I recently read how it's only .01 percent of our DNA that's responsible for the expression of our skin colour and our traits, all of which are our outward appearance that we define as race. But those things are the things that we use to define each other. We are biased when we look at a person, when we are talking specifically about race " Marguerite is an American...

“So, I think the first thing we must realise that there is no end-game here. It’s not like 10 years, practice this and in 10 years you’re going to be relieved of all unconscious biases, thats never going to happen. First to understand that, that’s a perpetual operation within our, our mind, it’s going to always be there. So I think what it requires is, I mean, you know, kind of acute awareness of...

Syima Aslam is the founder and director of the Bradford Literature Festival (BLF), a 10-day literary and cultural celebration, which she established in 2014. The BLF welcomes more than 70,000 visitors to Bradford annually and is celebrated as the most socio-economically and ethnically diverse  literary festival in the UK. Under Syima’s directorship, the BLF has made a...

“For me, one of the many things that is most significant about being a person of colour, a brown person, having been brought up in the ‘70s, in an exclusively white English family, but in an almost exclusively white English context, is that the ideas and beliefs that I have gained and have been transmitted down through my parents, my grandparents, have influenced the way in which I think and behav...

Annette Smith (née Julien) was born in December 1927 on the small Caribbean Island of Grenada into a privileged family. She was educated in Trinidad and returned to Grenada where she completed a year of nursing before embarking on a journey to England aged just 18. She travelled completely alone and this was her first trip abroad. In 1946, post-WWII, Annette became the only black nurse at the Guil...

Sabriye Tenberken, from Germany, knows what it is to be marginalised after becoming fully blind at the age of 12. She studied Tibetology/Central Asian Sciences at Bonn University and helped develop the Tibetan Braille Script. In 1997, Sabriye travelled on horseback through the Himalayas and in 1998, along with her partner Paul Kronenberg, started the first school for the blind in Tibet. This schoo...

Q, also known as Francesca Mudannayake, is a Sri Lankan based singer/songwriter who has been performing since she was 6. After honing her skills at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in the UK and singing at the Barbican Theatre, Q released her debut EP  Hysteria  in April 2021.  Blending alternative R&B with lyrics on female sexuality and independence, R...

Safiya Yasmin Badzhva (pronounced Bajwa) is a 22-year-old marketing student from Moscow. She was born and raised in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. Safiya sees herself as 100% Muscovite, but her appearance doesn’t fit into the stereotypical image of a local Russian. Safiya feels that Moscow is getting more diverse, so it's important to question the idea of xenophobia and racism...

Priyanca Radhakrishnan is a Member of Parliament in the New Zealand Labour Party and a Minister of the Crown. Her portfolios include Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities. She is the first person of Indian origin to become a Minister in New Zealand. Born in India, Priyanca went to school in Singapore, and then moved to New Zealand to further her education. She has spent her work life advocat...

Papa CJ is an award-winning, international stand-up comedian. He has performed over 2000 shows in over 25 countries. Forbes Magazine called him ‘the global face of Indian stand-up’ and Harvard Business Review called him 'one of the most influential comedians around the world’. He has won awards for both Asia and India’s best stand-up comedian. He is also a motivational speaker and corporate traini...

Maria Arpa is the founder of the Centre for Peaceful Solutions and the executive director at The Centre for Non-Violent Communication. She has dedicated the last 20 years of her life promoting non-violent communication as an alternative to mainstream systems of domination culture. Through her career, Maria has worked in some of the most violent areas of the UK and the USA, including with families,...

At age 27, Hosna Jalil was the first woman appointed to a high Interior Ministry post in Afghanistan. She held the post of Deputy for Policy and Strategic Affairs and later Deputy for Women Affairs. Until the age of nine she lived under the Taliban regime, not being allowed to attend school. Despite this she went on to achieve a BA in Physics before completing a master’s degree in Business Managem...

Matt Davis lives in London with his wife, Eliza and two children, Isaac and Tabitha.  13-year-old Isaac is autistic and was diagnosed with autism at age 3.  Matt writes a blog about this journey and shares his thoughts and feelings at  mysonisaac.net   Matt is a Trustee of Autistica and Parent Patron and business ambassador for Ambitious About Autism. He is also a partner at Re...

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC one of Britain's most distinguished lawyers. She has spent her professional life giving voice to those who have least power within the system, championing civil liberties and promoting human rights. In an interview from a few years ago, Helena was asked about her best and worst days of works. Successes like the release of Paul Hill, one of The Guildford Four, is a given,...

Habeeb Akande is a sex educator, author and historian. His work explores an ancient African sexual practice for women's satisfaction, which he believes can close the gender pleasure gap. His work also covers race relations and sexual intimacy in Brazil and Muslim cultures. Habeeb is the author of the Amazon bestselling book  Kunyaza: The Secret to Female Pleasure ,   which was featured i...

Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the connections between landscape, ecology, identity and migration. She has specialised in conducting long-term projects that are demanding both physically and intellectually. For example, she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals for her Mother River project. Yan has published two photo books...

Andrew Feinstein is a former African National Congress (ANC) Member of Parliament who served in South Africa under Nelson Mandela. He resigned in protest in 2001 at the ruling party’s refusal to allow an unfettered investigation into a massively corrupt $10bn arms deal. He is an author of the critically-acclaimed The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade which reveals the corruption at the he...

Emeka Onwubiko was the first Nigerian-born footballer to play for the Republic of Ireland and wear the Irish jersey. Today, Emeka is a UEFA Certified Coach coaching inspiring young football players. On the weekend of May 1st, 2021 a number of football organisations in England are going silent on social media to highlight increasing levels of racist abuse on social media platforms. "When you play w...

Indira Kaur Ahluwalia is an activist and entrepreneur turned advisor, coach, and now an author. She’s worked in federal government contracting, particularly international development, to build equity, accountability, and sustainability. As Indira fulfilled her life’s passions and professional obligations, she was diagnosed with stage IV advanced breast cancer with bone metastasis at age 38. Her fi...

Jaishree Misra is an author of Indian origin living in Britain. She has written eight novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins. She has also written a non-fiction account of building a writer’s studio on the beach in her home state of Kerala, India. She is a postgraduate in English Literature from Kerala University and has two diplomas from the University of London, one in Broadcast Journali...

Jonah Batambuze is a Ugandan-American, multidisciplinary creative, and founder of a community for Black and South Asian people called the Blindian Project. https://www.blindian-project.com/ "For me growing up, the culture, it was you were dating. People dated from when they were like thirteen. Like, my parents met some of my girlfriends, but there was never an expectation that Jonah is going...