The Social Mosaic Podcast

On June 17th, the European Parliament voted 418 to 218 to allow the deportation of asylum seekers to detention centres outside the EU. Far-right MEPs chanted “send them back” in the chamber. That same evening, I had a conversation with a man that I have not been able to stop thinking about. This episode is about polarisation, but more precisely, about what we are actually calling polarisation and...

The phrase “I am because we are” is well-known, but what does it truly mean to live it? In a world dominated by hyper-capitalism and deep individualism, the African philosophy of Ubuntu offers more than a beautiful slogan—it provides a radical framework for rethinking our relationships to each other, our communities, and our work. In this episode, we sit down with Bernard Mayaka, a lecturer, socia...

What if the way you see your own body isn’t really “your” idea at all? In this episode of The Social Mosaic, we trace a line from the colonial exhibition of Sarah Baartman to “Instagram Face,” skin‑smoothing filters, Ozempic vlogs, and “self‑care” surgery culture. We look at how beauty standards are engineered by colonial histories, medical institutions, and now by algorithms—and what it does to u...

Here’s a question: When did you last have to smile when you didn’t feel like smiling? Perform calm when you wanted to scream? Absorb someone else’s anger as if it cost you nothing? Welcome to emotional labour—the invisible work that holds everything together but leaves you wondering: where is yourself in all of this? In 1983, sociologist Arlie Hochschild studied flight attendants and discovered so...

What holds society together? It’s not just laws or economies—it’s care. The invisible, undervalued work of keeping people alive, healthy, fed, and emotionally stable. Yet we treat care as if it just... happens. Naturally. For free. In this episode, we explore why care work is overwhelmingly done by women—especially poor women, racialized women, and migrant women—and why capitalism depends on this...

Have you ever felt like people only see one part of who you are? Like you're constantly being reduced to a single checkbox—your gender, your race, your job title—when the reality is so much more complex? In this episode, we explore intersectionality: the idea that our identities don't exist in isolation but overlap, interact, and create unique experiences that can't be understood by looking at jus...

What happens when you’re the one who can’t let it go? When you speak up at the family dinner, call out the joke at work, or refuse to smile through injustice? You become what Sara Ahmed calls a “feminist killjoy”—the person who ruins the mood by naming what everyone else wants to ignore. In this episode, we explore why speaking up feels so risky, how systems of power silence dissent, and what it m...