Earlier this year Michael Schaap went to DRCongo as part of the Fairphone fact finding mission. The goal was to better understand how the minerals that make up our technology, our mobile phones, are mined and how they travel from miners up through all the middle people and eventually to the mobile phone producers. Can this process be carried out ethically? Where people are not taken advantage of or abused while doing their work and earning a living? Michael saw first hand how this process works and where things could perhaps change. But does the organization have the resources and support to achieve their goals? What lessons came out of the visit to Katanga?
Since the beginning of 2011 Juan Rodriguez has been working in Afghanistan with the mission to help this country communicate. This has meant bringing internet connectivity to schools, mobile phones for farmers, and an array of crowdsource projects for health, security, and agriculture. On one beautiful and relaxed Friday afternoon in Jalalabad, Juan and I sat in the garden of the wonderful Taj to record this program and tell this story.
You don’t often hear from poets in Afghanistan, but beyond all the politics and violence that gets all the press, they’ve been there all along, writing, reciting, performing…
My guest is Wida Sharifi, a poet and writer based here in Herat. She joins me to tell me about how she got her start in poetry and how the world of poetry works in Afghanistan. We also get into literacy, television, work, and more.
The violence and threats occasionally are reported about in the mainstream media. The threats to funding have also grabbed headlines this year. Almost two years since the murder of Dr. Tiller, what is the state of abortion in the United States? For those who perform the procedure. For those who need or want the procedure. How have things been changing for all the actors involved over the past few years.
To explain the state of things I’m visiting with one of my favorite people, Leah, of the Philadelphia Women’s Center.
She was last on the program back in December of 2007, discussing the state of abortion in America at that time.
The way people talk and think about poverty has a major influence in how it is addressed in society. The problem is that there is a limited amount of research regarding perceptions of poverty in different parts of the world and throughout history. Armando Barrientos, Professor and Research Director at the Brooks World Poverty Institute (Manchester), has extensive experience with research and policy related to perception of poverty. He joins me on this podcast to talk about what trends can be identified and even a bit of possible good news when it comes to global poverty.
Driving outside of Tbilisi on the way to the ancient city Mtskheta, my hosts and I talk about Georgian language and how it has been effected by decades of Soviet Occupation and migration patterns. We also delve into Russian-Georgian relations today and how war is still very much part of the language and memory of the nation.
You can follow one of the guests on this episode via his twitter account. The other guest will remain anonymous.
The way people talk and think about poverty has a major influence in how it is addressed in society. The problem is that there is a limited amount of research regarding perceptions of poverty in different parts of the world and throughout history. 
