Michael Schaap is a documentary maker, a voice over artist, and an arm-chair historian who I have had the pleasure of knowing for almost two decades. For the past four years he has been watching in frustration and sadness as the US and the rest of the world, walk down a dangerous path not unlike what we’ve seen before. Today on the podcast, an end of the year, Hanakkuh-Christmas-Kwanzaa-Festivus special looking at the glboal impact of the election in the US. And like every good holiday film, if you listen close you’ll hear an inspiring message… as well as Michael’s cat chewing on cables and documents.
Over the past 4 years documentary film maker Shafiur Rahman has been regularly back and forth from his home in the UK to the Rohingya Refugee camps in Bangladesh. Until the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Now 10 months into this global crisis on top of an already nightmarish situation for millions of Rohingya people, Shafiur has used these months to find new and creative ways of raising awareness and helping improve life for refugees living in the camps. Today on the podcast, we talk about the situation in 2020 for the Rohingya and how Shafiur has approached the issue in these trying times.
John Aravosis has been fighting for a better country and a better world for over 30 years. As a journalist and a commentator, despite all his experience, he says there has never been anything as confounding and threatening as the current president of the United States. Scary times in America. Yet somewhere in the madness, John also talks about where he finds hope, possibility, and humor.
Today on the podcast we hear about what he’s seeing in Washington DC, and talk about the state of the media and his personal experience from legendary blogger to a rising force in the podcast world. Listen and enjoy!
South Africa is not a place where keeping a distance from one another matches the traditions of how communities have survived and thrived for generations. But since March of this year, the nation has lived with restrictions, lockdowns, closures and limits of social activities familiar to many people around the world. Meanwhile, the ongoing struggle with gender based violence rages on, though it is not clear if this is a new chapter with real change on the horizon or just a continuation of injustice as usual.
My guest on today’s podcast is the wonderful Noni Shakur joining us from Cape Town to talk about South Africa during Corona, and reflections on what we’ve got, what we need, and what we may not get in the near future. Follow her on instagram @nonishakur or follow her brand new lockdown project: @yobiggirlplanties – plants as metaphors for life.
The longest running mashup podcast in the world started in London under the name Radio Clash where to this day Tim sits behind the mic. A member of the original podcasters generation, he has seen trends emerge and disappear, crises, change, the good the bad… the odd.. all of it. And then came Covid19.
Today on the podcast, from Lockdown London, it’s Tim from Radio Clash to talk music, politics, culture, gentrification, London, BLM, and more.
Songs in today’s podcast come from the following episodes of Tim’s program:
Cornelius Kibelka somehow got on the last flight from Europe to Brazil before they closed the border earlier this year. Upon arrival he was greeted by a São Paulo under lockdown, and a nation deeply divided about how to deal with a virus along political lines. Today on the podcast he tells us what he is seeing, feeling and hearing in the most populous city in Brazil and what it all might mean for the weeks and months to come.
