Podcasts about Mumbai

Share a commentA king goes looking for the family of his enemy, and what he plans to do with them flips every instinct about power on its head. We walk through 2 Samuel 9 and David's decision to show covenant kindness to Mephibosheth, the surviving son of Jonathan and grandson of Saul, a man hiding in fear and living with a disability he can't undo. Instead of asking who is worthy, David asks who is left, and that single question becomes one of the clearest pictures of biblical grace anywhere in the Old Testament. We also sit with a modern story that makes the theme painfully tangible: girls in the Mumbai region who were literally named “unwanted,” then offered a public chance to choose a new name. That idea of renaming opens the door to a deeper conversation about status change, moving from outcast to family, from enemy to friend, from worthless to priceless. Grace is not a reward for the helpful or impressive. It is love that is undeserved, unearned, and impossible to repay. Along the way we meet Ziba, the opportunist who tries to discourage the whole mission, and we talk about why there are always obstacles to grace. We trace Mephibosheth's childhood fall, connect it to the broader story of humanity's fall into sin, and lean into the New Testament language of being brought into God's family. The episode closes with David's stunning promise: “You shall eat at my table always,” a line that turns a feared rival's heir into a son-like guest. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of the story most challenged the way you think about grace?Learn more about twenty-five years of global impact, and reserve tickets to our gala. https://www.wisdomonline.org/mp/25 Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

Share a commentA king goes looking for the family of his enemy, and what he plans to do with them flips every instinct about power on its head. We walk through 2 Samuel 9 and David's decision to show covenant kindness to Mephibosheth, the surviving son of Jonathan and grandson of Saul, a man hiding in fear and living with a disability he can't undo. Instead of asking who is worthy, David asks who is left, and that single question becomes one of the clearest pictures of biblical grace anywhere in the Old Testament. We also sit with a modern story that makes the theme painfully tangible: girls in the Mumbai region who were literally named “unwanted,” then offered a public chance to choose a new name. That idea of renaming opens the door to a deeper conversation about status change, moving from outcast to family, from enemy to friend, from worthless to priceless. Grace is not a reward for the helpful or impressive. It is love that is undeserved, unearned, and impossible to repay. Along the way we meet Ziba, the opportunist who tries to discourage the whole mission, and we talk about why there are always obstacles to grace. We trace Mephibosheth's childhood fall, connect it to the broader story of humanity's fall into sin, and lean into the New Testament language of being brought into God's family. The episode closes with David's stunning promise: “You shall eat at my table always,” a line that turns a feared rival's heir into a son-like guest. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of the story most challenged the way you think about grace?Learn more about twenty-five years of global impact, and reserve tickets to our gala. https://www.wisdomonline.org/mp/25 Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

Chronic back pain that no scan explains? Dimple Jangda sits down with Prof. Dr. Ali Irani — the first sports physiotherapist in the Indian subcontinent and physiotherapist to the Indian cricket team from 1987 to 1997 — to unpack why pain persists, why vitamin deficiencies are so widely missed, and what actually supports a long, mobile life.In this episode, Dimple shares her own diagnosis publicly for the first time: eight episodes of being bedridden with sciatica-like pain, MRIs, X-rays and blood tests that explained nothing — until one question from Dr. Irani led to an HLA-B27 diagnosis and ankylosing spondylitis.WHAT YOU'LL LEARN▪ The one question that changes a pain diagnosis: if pain is worst in the evening it's usually mechanical; if it's worst on waking and eases as you move, it points to something pathological.▪ Why vitamin D and B12 deficiency is so common — Dr. Irani estimates over half of Indians are deficient — and why sunlight alone isn't enough. In a study of eight Mumbai football teams training 3–4 hours daily in the sun, almost all players were still deficient.▪ The missing mineral: without enough magnesium, your body can't hold on to vitamin D3 and B12. Pumpkin seeds and roasted chana are traditional sources.▪ Why standard blood panels don't include D3 and B12 — you have to ask for them.▪ Swimming for spinal conditions, why extension exercises undo a day spent bending forward, and the posture problem behind widespread neck pain.▪ Brain mapping and the five states of mind — delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma. Athletes recalling their best games measured in alpha; those recalling their worst measured in beta or gamma. Why chanting Om and echo sounds shift you into alpha.▪ Lung capacity and lifespan: why breathing rate correlates with longevity across species, and what pranayama does to vital capacity.▪ Grounding and earthing — why two-pin phone chargers have no earth, and what that means for your nervous system.▪ Flat feet, foot arches and why insoles change posture, knees and spine.▪ Colon health and medication absorption — why cleaning the gut can matter more than increasing a dose.▪ Ice versus heat, cold plunges, pelvic floor health, Indian versus Western toilets and hip replacement rates.▪ Dr. Irani's 40-day no-gossip challenge, and why he believes your relationship with your parents predicts your success.ABOUT DR. ALI IRANIHead of Department, Physiotherapy and Sports Medicine & Rehabilitation Centre, Nanavati Max Super Speciality Hospital, Mumbai. Physiotherapist to the Indian cricket team 1987–1997. Two PhDs, in Sports Medicine and in Anatomy of Body Movement and Dance. Chairperson (International Affairs), Indian Association of Physiotherapists.ABOUT DIMPLE JANGDAAyurvedic health coach, author of Heal Your Gut, Mind & Emotions, and founder of Prana by Dimple. Trained at Harvard in Lifestyle Medicine and at Stanford in Gut Health and the Microbiome.

What happens when trust collides with reality? This week, Jesus and Liz dig into an AI farming disaster that reportedly wiped out nearly 25 acres of crops, the complicated story behind comedian Damon Darling's lifetime Walmart ban, and the remarkable journey of Lasse Lund, a Norwegian man whose childhood in Mumbai shaped his identity and unexpected accent.From artificial intelligence and viral headlines to second chances, survival, and the internet's talent for missing context, Episode 268 explores three strange stories where the truth gets more complicated the deeper you go.

The cooperative ride-hailing platform has seen overwhelming response in cities like Pune & cities of Gujarat, while Delhi & Mumbai are a bit slow due to intense competition, it is learnt.----more----https://theprint.in/india/bharat-taxi-sees-stronger-traction-in-smaller-cities-than-metros-major-expansion-on-the-cards/3027114/

When a broken heart turns into a blueprint, one woman can quietly change the fate of thousands. In this episode, Christine sits down with Sister Lucy Kurien, the visionary founder of Maher (“Mother's Home”), an interfaith, caste-free network of homes for women, children, and men in India. Called to ServeSister Lucy Kurien was born in 1956 in Kolayad, Kannur District, Kerala, India. After several years of formal education, at age 14 she moved to Mumbai, where she was profoundly distressed by the appalling poverty and squalor in the city. Having carried a strong inner desire for justice since childhood, she felt a deep calling to make a difference in the lives of the poor and famished around her. In 1980, she joined Sisters of the Cross, a religious order. It was a difficult decision that meant giving up the bliss of an independent and free life. After 4 years of training, she was professed to the order.The Birth of MaherSister Lucy started Maher activities in a small home in Vadhu Budruk, near Bhima Koregaon on the Ahmednagar highway. Her tireless efforts and the work of the dedicated staff led to the expansion of Maher activities to nearby areas. These include the villages in Shirur, Haveli and Khed talukas, as well as the city of Ratnagiri, Miraj & Satara in Maharashtra. Beyond Maharashtra, Maher has established homes in Kerala, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Karnataka, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. In 2011, unable to ignore the plight of abandoned men on the streets, Maher opened its first home for destitute, aged, and mentally challenged men. Today Maher reaches the life of the poorest of the poor through as many as 25 different outreach projects, including 672 village self-help groups and 75 interfaith, caste-free homes that currently shelter 996 children and 292 men and over 798 destitute women. Since its founding, Maher has provided care and shelter for more than 6200 children, 6,500 women, and 850 men.In this conversation, you'll hear how Sister Lucy transforms heartbreak into practical compassion—turning love into food, shelter, education, mental health care, and long-term dignity.Press play to hear Sister Lucy's extraordinary story and what it truly means to be “the medicine and refuge” in a hurting world—and if her work moves you, please donate to Maher. Your listening amplifies her message; your giving helps keep “Mother's Home” open for those who have nowhere else to turn.(00:00:00): Introduction to Sister Lucy as a Living Practitioner of Love and Founder of Maher(00:04:10): Sister Lucy's Childhood in Kerala and First Exposure to Urban Poverty in Bombay(00:08:28): Choosing Religious Life(00:10:40): The Pivotal Domestic Violence Incident and Sister Lucy's Overwhelming Guilt and Rage(00:16:57): Leaving Institutional Security to Follow Her Mission with No Money or Personnel(00:18:09): Building the First Maher Home(00:21:20): Maher as Interfaith and Caste-Free(00:23:27): “I Am Not Leaving Anyone, I Am Including Everything” as a Core Spiritual Move(00:26:45): Story of the Woman Chained to a Tree and Misunderstandings of Mental Illness as “Possession”(00:34:51): Scale of Maher's Current Work: Homes for Women, Men, Children, and Education Outcomes(00:35:54): Patriarchy, Gender Disparities, and Slow Change for Women in India's Villages(00:38:01): Meeting Pope Francis and Asking Him to Ordain Women and Support Women Religious in the Villages(00:41:04): Calling for Equal, Not Overpowering, Feminine Leadership—Win-Win Rather Than Reversal of Dominance(00:43:16): Sister Lucy's Vision at 30 Years of Maher: Preparing Next-Generation Leadership and Inviting Others to Learn and Replicate the Maher Model(00:46:43): Focusing on the One Thing You Can Do Instead of Being Paralyzed by Global Pain(00:50:35): Invitation to SupportHelpful links:Sister Lucy Kurien - Founder of Maher. Help Maher Change Lives! Learn how to donate at this linkFollow on Facebook @maher.ashram.indiaLearn more about The Reverence Fund on Rosebud Woman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Gaurang Gaikwad shares the story of how he found his way into homeopathy and how a strong desire to learn shaped his journey. He talks about the people who influenced him, including Dr. Vijay Vaishnav and Dr. Sarkar, and the experiences that helped him grow beyond what he learned in college. We also talk about his book Decoding Mental Rubrics, his new book on acute and chronic diseases, and the online courses he has created along the way. Episode Highlights: 01:40 - From surgeon's child to homeopathy 04:48 - The click that changed everything: Dr. Vijay Vaishnav Impact  06:19 - Learning from multiple sources: Expanding knowledge beyond college 09:21 - The journey of a dedicated learner 14:28 - Persistence pays off: Earning Dr. Sarkar's attention and guidance 22:11 - Unveiling the journey to write "Decoding Mental Rubrics" 32:23 - Finding balance in the chaos 38:41 - His new book on acute and chronic diseases 40:21 - Online courses that he has put together   About my guest: Dr. Gaurang Gaikwad is a highly accomplished and internationally renowned homeopathic practitioner and teacher. With a blend of classical and advanced kingdom approaches, he has become one of the most popular teachers among the younger generation in India and was even invited to Europe to teach classical homeopathy and repertory, making him the youngest homeopath to do so. Driven by a rich family heritage of doctors, he received fundamental training in classical homeopathy from his first mentor, Dr. Vijay Vaishnav. Inspired by and closely associated with Dr. Rajan Sankaran, Dr. Gaurang has collaborated on several world-renowned books and works closely with him at 'The Other Song Academy'. Additionally, he gained invaluable knowledge and experience under the guidance of Dr. Sunirmal Sarkar in Kolkata. Dr. Gaurang's passion for teaching has led him to train homeopaths from Europe and all over the world through webinars and online lectures. He has authored several books, including 'Decoding Mental Rubrics' and 'Materia Medica of Nosodes and Sarcodes, and his expertise extends to research on thyroid disorders, PCOD, and autoimmune disorders. His dedication and contributions to the field have been recognized with the prestigious Late Dr. Mahendra Singh Memorial National Award for the best teacher in the homeopathic field in 2020. With a thriving private clinic in Matunga, Mumbai, Dr. Gaurang continues to make a significant impact in the realm of clinical homeopathy.   Find out more about Dr. Gaurang Website:https://www.drgauranggaikwad.com/ Email: gauranghg@gmail.com   If you would like to support the Homeopathy Hangout Podcast, please consider making a donation by visiting www.EugenieKruger.com and click the DONATE button at the top of the site. Every donation about $10 will receive a shout-out on a future episode.   Join my Homeopathy Hangout Podcast Facebook community here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HelloHomies   Follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/eugeniekrugerhomeopathy/   Here is the link to my free 30-minute Homeopathy@Home online course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqBUpxO4pZQ&t=438s   Upon completion of the course - and if you live in Australia - you can join my Facebook group for free acute advice (you'll need to answer a couple of questions about the course upon request to join): www.facebook.com/groups/eughom

Introduction What does it take to launch an insurance product that did not previously exist, get it live in twelve states in under five months, and run it with a deliberately small team? Vital Coverage Insurance Services did exactly that, and in this episode Josh Hollander brings both sides of the build into the same conversation.   Arvind Kaushal, Co-Founder and CEO of Cogitate, and Justin Krone, COO of Vital Coverage Insurance Services, join Josh for a rare three-way conversation on the show. They cover why Justin left a twenty-year carrier career to run an MGU, why Arvind tells founders to underwrite their technology partner the way they would underwrite a risk, and where each of them draws the line on AI in an underwriting workflow. They do not fully agree on that last one, which is the most useful part of the discussion.   Guests Arvind Kaushal co-founded Cogitate in 2012 and leads the company as CEO. He came to insurance software from the operator side. Before founding Cogitate he was CFO and CIO at Insurance House, which meant, in his words, that he was signing the checks and responsible for the systems at the same time. The first version of what became the DigitalEdge platform was not a product, it was a fix for his own company's broken workflows. Earlier in his career he spent eight years at Delta Air Lines, including work as an architect on Delta.com, and started out at Wipro in Mumbai.   Justin Krone spent twenty years at CNA Insurance, the last ten running small business and small commercial strategy, before becoming COO of Vital Coverage Insurance Services. Vital is a lean, single-product MGU selling a first-of-its-kind business continuity coverage for small medical practices, protecting physician, dental, and veterinary offices against the loss of a key practitioner. The program launched across twelve states in under five months and is now live in seventeen.   Key Topics -Underwrite your partner. Arvind's rule for choosing a technology vendor is to run the same diligence on the partner that you would run on a risk, because every provider in the market will tell you they can do everything. -Principles over capabilities. Justin has seen most of the policy administration platforms on the market, and argues the deciding factor was not the feature comparison but whether the two organizations approached problems the same way. -The lean MGU thesis. Vital was designed so that a tenfold jump in quote volume would not require materially more staff, and that constraint shaped the underwriting model as much as the technology stack. -AI as a guardrail rather than an autopilot. Arvind's position is that AI should surface the risk a human misses under volume pressure and flag what falls outside appetite, while the decision stays with the underwriter. -The case for keeping AI out of underwriting. Justin built a deliberately tight, binary risk-selection model and uses AI heavily across marketing, research, and operations while leaving underwriting alone for now. -Why the culture change is harder than the tooling. Cogitate began its AI-first push three years ago and stumbled early, and Arvind argues the models were never the difficult part. -Waiting for regulation to catch up. Both guests work through the NAIC AI model bulletin and what compliance looks like in practice when the carrier remains responsible for what a vendor's AI does.   Notable Quotes "I don't think of AI in underwriting as an autopilot. I think of it as a guardrail."   "It's not about the tools or LLM models. It's actually about the mindset. The tools are the easy part. Shifting how people think is the hard part. And everyone underestimates it."   "It's not that they have the best capabilities out there. It's that our principles aligned."   "Ideas are easy and execution is hard. And the one thing that I think AI might be kind of changing is that second piece."   Resources Guests: Cogitate: https://cogitate.com/ Arvind Kaushal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvind-kaushal-cogitate-digital-insurance/ Vital Coverage Insurance Services: https://myvitalcoverage.com/ Justin Krone on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-krone-78b96563/ Host & Organization: Joshua R. Hollander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarhollander/ Horton International (USA): https://www.horton-usa.com/ Insurtech Leadership Podcast (LinkedIn Showcase): https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insurtech-leadership-show   Subscribe & Review If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. The Insurtech Leadership Podcast is available on YouTube, Podbean, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

How do you go from seeing the Google website load for the first time on a campus computer screen in Mumbai to building and exiting three tech ventures, writing The Golden Tap, and buying back your company from VCs — all while navigating the rapid rise of AI?In this episode of TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, host Dr. Abhay Dandekar sits down with serial entrepreneur, investor, author, and HyperTrack Founder & CEO Kashyap Deorah. Kashyap shares his journey across changing tech cycles, from falling in love with the internet at IIT Bombay to building and exiting three tech ventures, capturing the Indian tech ecosystem in his bestselling book The Golden Tap, and making the bold decision to buy back HyperTrack from venture capital investors to become a management-owned company.  Kashyap also breaks down his philosophy on why "technology accelerates human behavior rather than equalizing opportunity," how startup scaling accelerated from 0-to-1M in 18 months to 0-to-100M in 18 months, why high school dropouts building AI-native tools are outperforming legacy pivots, and why deep emotional connection and empathy remain the core operating system for tech leaders.  If you enjoy deep conversations on entrepreneurship, venture capital, technology, and identity across the global South Asian community, please LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE! --------------------------⏱️ CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS00:00 - Teaser: Why Technology Accelerates Human Behavior01:46 - IIT Bombay, Google & Falling in Love with Entrepreneurship06:32 - The Accelerated Startup Pace: AI-Native Founders vs. Legacy Pivots09:53 - Building HyperTrack: Gig Workforce Logistics & Field Automation15:54 - Sponsor Break: TRAVELOPOD and Lotus Lane Coffee16:52 - Capital Concentration & Shifting Venture Capital Dynamics19:53 - Why We Bought Back Our Startup From VCs24:35 - Hard Truths for Founders: M&A Realities, Valuations & Misalignment28:58 - Sponsor Break: Timberdog Ruffrest29:25 - Tech Polarization, Vipassana Meditation & Consciousness36:00 - Reconnecting Feeling with Thinking in Tech Leadership43:32 - Outro & Diaspora Community Shoutouts  --------------------------EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS & KEY TAKEAWAYS:• The Core Operating System: Why human relationship building, empathy, and active listening remain constant anchors despite hyper-accelerating tech cycles.• Buying Back Your Startup: How HyperTrack realigned with investors to buy back VCs/PEs and transition to a profitable, management-owned business.• Tech Accelerates Human Behavior: Why technology doesn't automatically equalize opportunity, but rather accelerates existing human tendencies and polarization.• Leading with Feeling: How Vipassana meditation and connecting at an emotional level help founders make better decisions in an AI-driven world.GUEST & HOST RESOURCES:

The headlines of the day by The Indian Express

What happens when a life of travel begins with a modelling trip to Acapulco at 16 and goes on to include touring the world with The Rolling Stones, climbing to 17,000ft in Tibet and even spotting a UFO in Brazil? This week, Tanya is joined by Jo Wood, model, entrepreneur, writer and founder of Jo Wood Organics, whose extraordinary life has taken her all over the world. Jo started travelling as a teenage model, but when she met Ronnie Wood at 22, she began joining him on tour and, as she tells Tanya, thinks she has now been to “most places in the world.”  In this episode, Jo shares: Why Japan is the one country Jo thinks everyone should visit Touring Japan with The Rolling Stones and seeing how dramatically the country changed between visits Why Buenos Aires completely surprised her, and arriving there with The Rolling Stones to scenes she describes as “Beatlemania” Spending a month travelling through Tibet with Sadhguru and climbing to 17,000ft at Mount Kailash The night Jo and Ronnie saw what she describes as a “proper UFO” while on holiday in Brazil and her other unexplained sightings while travelling in South America and Zanzibar Taking her own home-grown organic potatoes to Paris while on tour The restaurant hidden in the Spanish mountains that she recommends Her travels through India, from Kerala and Goa to Mumbai and Rajasthan Why she loves Zanzibar and keeps going back The Seychelles trip and photograph that sums up travel for her Her favourite restaurants and what she always takes with her when she travels From rock 'n' roll tours to remote pilgrimages, this is a life very well travelled. Subscribe to Travel Secrets for a new episode every week, as Tanya asks her guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them. And remember: this podcast might not change your life, but it might just change your plans. Chapters: 01:20 How has travel impacted the person you've become? 05:44 What's the one destination everyone should visit once in their lifetime? 08:38 What's your most unexpected travel experience? 10:52 What's your most overrated or underrated destination? 20:36 What and where do you love to eat and drink when you travel? 24:39 What's your top travel tip? 27:58 What's your most poignant travel memory? 31:51 What photograph sums up travel for you? 34:33 Where are you going next? Places mentioned Japan and Mount Fuji Buenos Aires, Argentina Tibet, Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash Nepal Brazil, including Recife and São Paulo Zanzibar, Tanzania The Seychelles Egypt India, including Coimbatore, Kerala, Goa, Mumbai and Rajasthan Acapulco, Mexico Paris and Cannes, France Tenerife and mainland Spain Los Angeles and Miami, USA London

This year, residents in several Indian cities -from Mumbai to Bengaluru - have experienced a shortage in water supply. India's big cities are expanding in terms of size and population. This has also meant a strain on existing resources such as land and water. We have already seen cities such as Bengaluru attempting to implement restrictions on use of potable water for non-potable purposes. But do our cities need more than that to ensure water security for the future? How water stressed are Indian cities? Guest: Priyanka Jamwal, Programme Leader and Senior Fellow, Water and Society Programme, ATREE Raj Bhagat, Senior Program Manager, Geo Analytics for Sustainable Cities & Transport program, WRI India Host: K. C. Deepika, City Editor, The Hindu, Bengaluru Producer: Shiksha Jural Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Primary Home BirthWe often hear women say, oh this is my first time, so I would prefer a hospital but for my second, I will choose a home birth.This is rooted first in fear and that home births are essentially unsafe, second a trust that is yet to develop in our bodies. Hence, we expect when we would have seen better, we would be more confident.  However, Krupa decided to have her first at home.. With a doctor in Mumbai, who supports home births. We would hear from Krupa, her reasons, experience and how she feels about it now as a mother of an almost 2 year old baby. Krupa and her husband took birth classes with me which furthered into postpartum lactation support for a month. And about Krupa : Krupa is mum to her 20-month old baby. Professionally, she is a trained therapist and an interdisciplinary researcher in psychology, art and anthropology. She is based between Mumbai and Germany where she presently teaches creative practice and anthropology to postgraduate students. Tune in now!Support the showSign up for Childbirth Preparation Programs! visit https://birthagni.com/services#childbirth-preparation-programshttps://birthagni.com/copy-of-services#breastfeeding-preparation-programThis episode is supported and made possible by podcast recording and hosting tool Zencastr, it is impeccably made! Use my link : https://zen.ai/vxmuJUgYKKGTF3JuTuFQ0g to sign up and record flawless remote podcast , USE my code : BIRTHAGNISupport the show:https://birthagni.com/birthagnipodcast#donateIf you like what you hear, leave us a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode!a review on Apple podcasts. Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FBShare on Instagram and tag us @divyakapoorvoxSupport the pro...

A six week jury trial is about to get underway in California, which could pose the biggest threat yet to Meta's operations. A coalition of US states have accused the parent company of Facebook and Instagram of putting profits ahead of children's safety, by deliberately designing platforms to be addictive to young users. A Meta spokesperson said the claims were "unsubstantiated", and the company stood by its record of creating strong protection for teenagers. The states are seeking upwards of $1 trillion from Meta. Also: President Trump's envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has failed to overturn Israel's objections to a US backed Gaza peace plan after two days of talks in the Middle East. The US President has also threatened to bomb Oman - a US ally - if it "gets in the way" of his administration's own talks with Iran. Fifa has sacked its chief operating officer Kevin Lamour, weeks after he criticised the organisation's president, Gianni Infantino. As Russia and Ukraine trade more deadly strikes, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, GUR, tells the BBC he expects the coming winter months to be harder for civilians than last year. Russia's prominent anti-war politician Lev Shlosberg has been sentenced to eleven years in prison for criticising the conflict in Ukraine. Witnesses have begun giving testimony in the long awaited murder trial of the American rapper, Tupac Shakur. A special report on Germany's efforts to tackle small boat crossings by migrants to the UK. And how the success of Italian athletes with African heritage at the European Athletics Championships could combat racism in Italy. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk FILE PHOTO: People are seen behind a logo of Meta Platforms, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. PhotoCredit: REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File

India's ruling party, the BJP, realizes it has a problem reaching young voters. Last month, youth-led protests, sparked by education policy and high unemployment, shook the political establishment. The Gen Z protest leaders started the “cockroach” political movement, so-named after an official disparagingly compared unemployed youth to “cockroaches.” So now the ruling party is revamping it's communications strategy. But even as they hope to woo young voters, police are arresting protest organizers on public order charges. We go to Mumbai to see the BJP's charm and punishment campaign with the younger generation.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show's perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

First, we speak to The Indian Express' Pratip Acharya about the deadly landslide in Mumbai's Kurla, why repeated warnings about the vulnerable hillside went unaddressed, and what the tragedy reveals about the city's failure to mitigate known landslide risks.Next, we speak to The Indian Express' Sujit Bisoyi about the steady erosion of Odisha's coastline, the districts most severely affected, and what the shrinking shoreline means for coastal communities and their livelihoods. (12:20)And in the end, we look at the BJP's major organisational reshuffle, including Smriti Irani's return to the central leadership, Amit Malviya's removal as social media convener, and the party's attempt to give greater prominence to women and younger leaders. (20:15)Hosted by Ichha SharmaProduced and written by Shashank Bhargava, Niharika Nanda and Ichha SharmaEdited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

 Rajeev Sharma | Cluster Managing Director - India, Nepal & Bangladesh, G4S.INTRODUCTION : Rajeev Sharma, Cluster Managing Director – India, Nepal & Bangladesh, G4S, An Allied Universal® Company, has had a long and successful journey with G4S. Prior to this role, he was the Country Managing Director, G4S India, and has contributed significantly to the growth of the overall business. Previously, Rajeev has also worked in the UK, where he was successful at integrating acquired assets for the company. He has over 30 years of cross-industry and offshore experience leading teams to deliver sustainable business, innovative solutions, and launch many industry firsts. As a stealth leader and strategist, he connects downward, upward, and across businesses, actualizing the value. Maximizing “management by walking around", he champions, energizes, and unifies all stakeholders. Prior to joining G4S, Rajeev worked as Head of Cargo Business with Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Previously, he has worked in various roles as Vice President for D&J business with Brinks Inc., Director Guarding & International business with Tops Security Limited. The initial years of his career were with Gati and Elbee (UPS). Rajeev has tremendous exposure in the financial management of the business and is hands-on with M&A projects, has managed multiple acquisitions, including a cross-border acquisition in the security space.  Rajeev is extremely well networked within the corporate space and enjoys a reputation of being a straight shooter and highly versatile. He is Chair of the FICCI PSI Committee and President of The Council of EU Chambers of Commerce in India (EU Chambers). He belongs to Mumbai and currently lives with his wife in Gurugram. Rajeev has a son who is a certified flight instructor from USA and is currently based in Mumbai.  

The Business of Laughs! Today I sit down with Ankur Nigam a Stand-up & Improv Comedian and Storytelling Coach dedicated to helping teams communicate with clarity, confidence, and a bit of humor.   Ankur shares his incredible journey of leaving a stable consulting career to chase the spotlight, the brutal reality of his first on-stage failure, and how a life-altering open-heart surgery at age 35 completely shifted his perspective on legacy and living in the moment.  He talks about adapting to the digital age, dealing with hecklers, and the unique comedy ecosystems of Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, why Delhi audiences are ruthless, taking risks, AI in comedy and the AI slop button on Linkedin, future goals, creative discipline and some Confucius chat! Whether you are an entrepreneur looking to nail your next investor pitch, a corporate leader wanting to communicate with more confidence, or just someone who loves a great comeback story, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Ankur breaks down the exact frameworks he uses to captivate crowds and teaches you how to inject humor and structured storytelling into your professional life. Key Takeaways: The LCM (Lowest Common Multiple) Theory: How to connect deeply with any audience by tapping into shared human experiences. The PQRS Framework: A practical guide to navigating sensitive topics in comedy and public speaking. How becoming a new dad influences his jokes. How he taught himself comedy. The Business of Laughs Pixar's Storytelling Framework: A simple 7-step structure to organize your narratives for maximum impact without writing from scratch. The Power of Consistency: Why writing every single day—even from a hospital bed—is the ultimate secret to creative success. And much more Links Search for "Ankur Nigam Comedy" to find his latest courses, updates, and content on Google. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurnigamstandupcomedy/   Hosted And Produced by Neil Patel https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/neilpatel2 Enjoyed this episode? Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review! Share this episode with your friends. Listen and Subscribe to More Episodeshttps://www.indianstartupshow.com/ Music by Punch Deck.https://open.spotify.com/artist/7kdduxAVaFnbHJyNxl7FWV

The Karnataka Government has been championing a project to build a nearly 10,000 acre Live-Work-Play greenfield city on its outskirts in Bidadi, which has become a political flashpoint as farmers oppose land acquisition. All our mega cities seem to be saturated, overpopulated and congested. As a country we seem to be looking at ways of decongesting them. As Bengaluru seeks to embark on a similar trajectory as other mega cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad which have experimented building satellite towns, we ask whether building such greenfield towns on the peripheries of these cities, really the way ahead. To discuss this, urban planning, policy and governance expert Champaka Rajgopal, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, joins us on the In Focus podcast. She brings over 25 years of experience of having worked with national, state and local governments in India and abroad on urban policy, planning and governance. She has worked on a Master Plan for Bengaluru, Structural Plan for Bengaluru Metropolitan Region, Perspective Plan for Bengaluru - Mumbai Economic Corridor and the Earlier Draft Development Plan for Greater Mumbai - 2034. Host: Aditya Bharadwaj Producer: Shiksha Jural Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First, we speak to The Indian Express' Atri Mitra about the police cases and serious allegations surrounding Sebaashray, the healthcare initiative closely associated with Abhishek Banerjee's Diamond Harbour Model, and why he has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.Next, we speak to The Indian Express' Sabah Virani about plans for Third Mumbai, a new urban centre spanning 124 villages, the protests surrounding land acquisition, and whether the project can improve connectivity and ease pressure on Mumbai. (08:05)And in the end, we look at Karnataka's year-long ban on the manufacture, storage, transportation, distribution and sale of gutka, pan masala and other products containing tobacco or nicotine, and how the measure will be enforced across the state. (17:05)Hosted by Ichha SharmaProduced and written by Shashank Bhargava, Niharika Nanda and Ichha SharmaEdited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

Spirituality Keeps Me GroundedAmol Anil Majumdar is the legendary first-class cricketer who was appointed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as the head coach of the India women's national cricket team in 2023. It was under his sterling guidance and stewardship that the Indian women's cricket team lifted the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup on November 2, 2025, in Mumbai. A primarily right-handed batsman, he held, for a brief period, the record for the most runs scored in the Ranji Trophy, India's premier domestic first-class cricket competition. In fact, he finished his Ranji career with 9,205 runs, which remains among the competition's highest-ever tallies.He was one of the guest speakers at the Summer Course on Indian Culture and Spirituality at Prasanthi Nilayam in July 2026. Following his inspiring talk to the students in the Poorna Chandra Auditorium, he visited the Sri Sathya Sai Media Centre and reflected on how spirituality had been his silent strength through the tumultuous journey of his cricketing career, and how the basis of this resilience was his connection with Sai.

The headlines of the day by The Indian Express

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold — not to hide the damage, but to make the fractures the most beautiful part. Mako Fujimura, one of the world's leading contemporary artists, and his wife Haejin, an attorney and founder of Embers International, have built their lives and work around that image. This conversation is about what it actually looks like to believe it.Mako talks about his own experience of 9/11 as a Ground Zero resident, and why he sees making — painting, writing, building an organization — as an act of invoking new creation in the middle of darkness. Haejin talks about the women and children her team serves in Mumbai's red light district, and why Kintsugi is the only metaphor honest enough for what restoration means there. They also talk about what the pandemic revealed about who a society actually depends on, why Jesus chose to appear after the resurrection as a wounded human, and what it means that the Kintsugi master doesn't begin mending until he can see beauty in the fragments.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at info@restoringthesoul.com Thanks for listening!

Fluent Fiction - Hindi: Rainy Revelations: Unveiling Mumbai's Urban Jungle Secrets Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/hi/episode/2026-08-08-22-34-01-hi Story Transcript:Hi: मुंबई की गगनचुंबी इमारतों के बीच छुपा एक हरा-भरा स्वर्ग, वो है शहरी जंगल।En: A green oasis hidden among the skyscrapers of Mumbai is the urban jungle.Hi: इस मेट्रोपोलिटन पार्क में हरियाली और जीव-जंतु भी रहते हैं।En: This metropolitan park houses greenery and animals.Hi: मानसून का मौसम आने पर यह जगह और भी सुंदर लगने लगती है।En: With the arrival of the monsoon season, the place becomes even more beautiful.Hi: बारिश की बूंदें जब पत्तों पर ठहरती हैं तो उनकी आवाज आसपास के माहौल को तरोताजा बना देती है।En: When raindrops rest on leaves, their sound refreshes the surrounding environment.Hi: आज स्कूल का एक समूह शहरी जैव विविधता के बारे में सीखने के लिए यहां आया था।En: Today, a school group visited to learn about urban biodiversity.Hi: उसमें रितिका, प्रणव और अनीशा भी शामिल थे।En: Ritika, Pranav, and Aneesha were part of it.Hi: रितिका के लिए प्रकृति एक खुली किताब की तरह थी।En: For Ritika, nature was like an open book.Hi: वह हमेशा कुछ नया सीखना चाहती थी।En: She always wanted to learn something new.Hi: प्रणव उसके सबसे अच्छे दोस्त थे, पर पर्यावरण के बारे में उतने उत्साही नहीं थे।En: Pranav was her best friend, but he wasn't as enthusiastic about the environment.Hi: जबकि अनीशा चाहती थी कि वह अपनी होशियारी से टीचर को प्रभावित कर सके।En: Meanwhile, Aneesha wanted to impress the teacher with her intelligence.Hi: "रितिका, जल्दी चलो!En: "Ritika, hurry up!"Hi: " प्रणव ने कहा।En: Pranav said.Hi: "बारिश कभी भी तेज हो सकती है।En: "The rain can get heavy at any moment."Hi: "लेकिन रितिका की नजरें आसपास की पौधों और फूलों पर थीं।En: But Ritika's eyes were on the surrounding plants and flowers.Hi: उसे कुछ खास खोजना था जो टीचर को प्रभावित कर सके।En: She wanted to find something special that could impress the teacher.Hi: तभी अचानक आसमान में बादलों की गड़गड़ाहट हुई और मूसलाधार बारिश शुरू हो गई।En: Suddenly, there was a rumble of clouds in the sky, and it began to pour heavily.Hi: "चलो, सभी शेल्टर में चलते हैं," टीचर ने कहा।En: "Let's get to shelter," the teacher said.Hi: पर रितिका का मन नहीं माना।En: But Ritika was unwilling.Hi: उसने सोचा, "अगर मैं अभी नहीं गई तो शायद मैं उस विशेष चीज को और नहीं ढूंढ पाऊंगी।En: She thought, "If I don't go now, I might not find that special thing later."Hi: " उसने हिम्मत जुटाई और बारिश में पार्क के भीतरी हिस्से की ओर बढ़ गई।En: She gathered courage and ventured into the inner part of the park in the rain.Hi: बारिश ने रितिका को पूरी तरह भीगा दिया, लेकिन उसे इसकी परवाह नहीं थी।En: The rain soaked Ritika completely, but she didn't care.Hi: उसने दिलचस्प फूल और पौधे देखने शुरू किए।En: She started looking at interesting flowers and plants.Hi: अचानक बहुत सारी झाड़ियों के बीच उसे एक अलग सा पौधा दिखाई दिया।En: Suddenly, amidst the bushes, she saw a different kind of plant.Hi: वह चौक गई।En: She was taken aback.Hi: वो पौधा शहर के प्रदूषण भरे माहौल में भी कितनी सुंदरता से खिल रहा था।En: That plant was blooming beautifully even in the polluted environment of the city.Hi: रितिका ने उसकी फोटो खींची और कुछ नोट्स बनाए।En: Ritika took a photo of it and made some notes.Hi: वापस आकर रितिका ने टीचर को अपनी खोज दिखाई।En: Upon returning, Ritika showed her discovery to the teacher.Hi: "ये पौधा इस माहौल में कैसे पनप पाया?En: "How did this plant survive in this environment?"Hi: " टीचर ने हैरानी से पूछा।En: the teacher asked in amazement.Hi: रितिका ने अपने शोध और पोथी के बारे में बताया।En: Ritika explained about her research and notes.Hi: टीचर ने उसे शाबाशी दी और बाकी सभी छात्र भी उसकी तारीफ करने लगे।En: The teacher praised her, and all the other students began to commend her as well.Hi: रितिका के चेहरे पर गर्व का भाव था।En: Glee and pride were evident on Ritika's face.Hi: उसने सीखा कि अपने इरादों पर विश्वास रखना जरूरी है और चुनौतियों का सामना करने से घबराना नहीं चाहिए।En: She learned that it is essential to believe in one's intentions and not fear facing challenges.Hi: इस खोज ने न केवल उसे बल्कि उसके दोस्तों को भी प्रेरित किया कि वे भी अपने लक्ष्यों को पूरा करने में कभी हार न मानें।En: This discovery inspired not only her but also her friends, encouraging them never to give up on achieving their goals. Vocabulary Words:oasis: स्वर्गskyscrapers: गगनचुंबी इमारतोंurban: शहरीbiodiversity: जैव विविधताenvironmnent: माहौलmonsoon: मानसूनraindrops: बारिश की बूंदेंrefreshes: तरोताजाsurrounding: आसपास काenthusiastic: उत्साहीimpress: प्रभावितventure: बढ़ गईsoaked: भीगाamidst: झाड़ियों के बीचpolluted: प्रदूषण भरेamazed: हैरानीcommend: तारीफglee: गर्वpride: गर्व का भावinspired: प्रेरितcourage: हिम्मतchallenges: चुनौतियोंintentions: इरादोंdiscovery: खोजnoted: नोट्स बनाएsurvive: पनप पायाpraise: शाबाशीbelieve: विश्वासsurvive: जीवितachieving: पूरा करने

India is an endlessly fascinating and delicious country. In this episode we explore the unique food system of Mumbai that originated a century before UberEats. Plus, a place that serves 30,000 meals a day for free (!), the signature dish of Kolkata, and, of course, Indian sweets. [Ep 401]. Show Notes: Support Destination Eat Drink Nice, France Food & Travel Guide Destination Eat Drink on YouTube Nazare Food Crawl video Mumbai Food Tour Delhi Food Tour Kolkata Food Tour Wendy Werneth The Nomadic Vegan

Hussain Shahzad is the Executive Chef of Hunger Inc. Hospitality in Mumbai, the group behind Papa's, The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro and Veronica's. He grew up in Chennai, and after training with The Oberoi Hotel Group in Mumbai, he moved to New York in early 2014 to join Eleven Madison Park. There he met Indian chef Floyd Cardoz and in 2015 joined as sous chef of The Bombay Canteen in Mumbai. He has since led the The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro and Veronica's, and in February 2024 opened Papa's, a 12-seater chef's-counter restaurant. In his podcast, Hussain Shahzad will share his thoughts on contemporary Indian cuisine, and he will also reveal the secrets of a great Bombay Duck, which has nothing to do with duck. He will also guide us to the best eating in Mumbai and the rest of India. All the recommendations mentioned in this podcast and thousands more are available in the World of Mouth app: https://www.worldofmouth.app/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First, we speak to The Indian Express' Shubhangi Khapre about the RSS's intensified outreach to Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and why Mohan Bhagwat's interaction with nearly 2,000 teenagers is being viewed as a response to the organisation's growing disconnect with young people.Next, we speak to The Indian Express' Pratip Acharya about why Mumbai pumped more than 4,000 crore litres of rainwater into the Arabian Sea during a spell of extreme rainfall, and whether the city could store or reuse such water in the future. (11:55)And in the end, we look at an Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi that abruptly lost around 300 feet after encountering turbulence, injuring 13 passengers and four crew members and prompting an investigation by the DGCA. (22:15)Hosted by Ichha SharmaProduced and written by Shashank Bhargava, Niharika Nanda and Ichha SharmaEdited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

Mumbai is home to the world's second-largest concentration of Art Deco buildings - yet few people know how or why it happened. In this episode, architect and sustainability practitioner Parineeta Katgaonkar traces the rise of Art Deco in Bombay, from reclaimed land and modern housing to jazz culture, Bombay Deco, and the city's evolving identity. A conversation about architecture, culture, memory, and the making of modern Mumbai. Watch the full episode of A Century of Stories: India featuring Parineeta Katgaonkar - out now!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Twenty kilometres outside Mumbai, sitting in a half-flooded slum with the rain hammering down,Daragh Cronin had what he calls one of the lowest moments of his life. This week he's filling us in on what happened since his last update during his adventure of cycling from Ireland to Mount Everest Base Camp. To keep up with Daragh's future adventures you can follow him via instagram @RoaminWithConin Check out the Elkhorn Rack from Old Man Mountain Support the showBuy me a coffee!I'm an affiliate for a few brands I genuinely use and recommend including:

Ankit Desai kom till Stockholm från Mumbai för tio år sedan för att plugga på Handelshögskolan. Sen fastnade han. I dag driver han SNAFU Records, som investerar i mellanstora artisters streamingkataloger och hjälper dem att växa. I dag sysselsätter bolaget 20 anställda och jobbar med artister i 47 olika länder. Mer än 100 miljoner streams kan varje månad tillskrivas SNAFU:s portfölj av låtar.I det här avsnittet pratar vi om Ankits väg hit, hur affärsmodellen egentligen fungerar och hur fler artister ska kunna leva på sin konst i framtiden. Programledare: Christian von Essen // Läs mer på hejaframtiden.se och kolla in partnersidan ifall du vill samarbeta på något sätt. // Nyhetsbrevet hittar du som vanligt på Substack.

Bodewein, Lena www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, Studio 9

Fluent Fiction - Hindi: Dancing in Mumbai's Rain: A Monsoon Adventure on Marine Drive Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/hi/episode/2026-07-31-07-38-20-hi Story Transcript:Hi: मरीन ड्राइव की ताजी हवा में हल्की सी नमी थी।En: There was a slight dampness in the fresh air of Marine Drive.Hi: बारिश के मौसम में मुंबई एक अलग ही रूप ले लेता है।En: During the rainy season, Mumbai takes on a completely different form.Hi: निष्ठा बंबई की इस पहली यात्रा में, मानसून की बारिश में एक दिन आराम से बिताने की चाह में थी।En: Nishta, on her first visit to Bombay, was eager to spend a relaxing day in the monsoon rains.Hi: उसने गर्म चाय के साथ मरीन ड्राइव पर बैठकर समुद्र की लहरों को देखने की योजना बनाई थी।En: She had planned to sit on Marine Drive with a hot cup of tea and watch the waves of the sea.Hi: उसके साथ कॉलेज का पुराना दोस्त रोहन था, जो पहले से ही मुंबई की तेज जिंदगी का मजा ले रहा था।En: With her was her old college friend Rohan, who was already enjoying the fast-paced life of Mumbai.Hi: वहीं, उसका नया सहकर्मी कार्तिक भी था, जिसने मुंबई में उसका स्वागत करने का जिम्मा लिया था।En: Also present was her new colleague Karthik, who had taken on the responsibility of welcoming her to Mumbai.Hi: कार्तिक का स्वभाव कुछ अधिक प्रतिस्पर्धी था, लेकिन उसकी निष्ठा के प्रति एक दोस्ताना भावना भी थी।En: Karthik's nature was somewhat more competitive, but he also had a friendly attitude towards Nishta.Hi: वहीं, जैसे ही तीनों मरीन ड्राइव पहुंचे, तेज़ बारिश शुरू हो गई।En: As soon as the three of them reached Marine Drive, heavy rain began.Hi: रोहन का स्वभाव कुछ ज्यादा ही मस्तीखोर था।En: Rohan's nature was a bit too playful.Hi: उसने जोश भरे स्वर में कहा, "बारिश में भीगने का असली मजा मुंबई में ही है।En: He said with enthusiasm, "The real fun of getting drenched is in Mumbai itself.Hi: चलो नाचते हैं।En: Let's dance."Hi: "कार्तिक ने थोड़ा व्यंग्यात्मक अंदाज में कहा, "निष्ठा को उसके पहले दिन का तैयार रहना चाहिए।En: Karthik said in a slightly sarcastic tone, "She should be prepared for her first day.Hi: वो भला कैसे इसका मजा ले सकती है?En: How can she enjoy this?"Hi: "निष्ठा के चेहरे पर हल्की सी चिंता की लकीर उभर आई।En: A slight thread of concern appeared on Nishta's face.Hi: उसे अंदाजा था कि अगर उसने रोहन की बात मानी, तो उसका मनपसंद दिन बरबाद हो सकता है।En: She guessed that if she listened to Rohan, her favorite day might be ruined.Hi: परंतु, उसके दिल के एक कोने में एक उत्साह भी था जो इस अनुभूति का अनुभव करना चाहता था।En: However, there was also an excitement in a corner of her heart that wanted to experience this feeling.Hi: थोड़ा सोचने के बाद, निष्ठा ने अपने मन की आवाज सुनी और बोली, "चलो, देखते हैं इस बारिश में क्या खास है।En: After thinking for a while, Nishta listened to her heart and said, "Let's see what's special in this rain."Hi: " बारिश की बूंदें अब और भी तेज हो गई थीं।En: The raindrops had now intensified.Hi: तीनों समुद्र के किनारे दौड़ने लगे।En: The three of them started running along the seashore.Hi: पानी की बूंदें जब उनके चेहरे पर पड़तीं, तो वो बारिश की ताजगी को महसूस करते।En: When the water droplets hit their faces, they felt the freshness of the rain.Hi: हंसी-मज़ाक के साथ वो मरीन ड्राइव की उस जगह पहुँचे जहाँ लहरें ज़ोर से टकराती थीं।En: With laughter and fun, they reached that spot on Marine Drive where the waves hit hard.Hi: रोहन ने निष्ठा की आँखों में झांकते हुए कहा, "देखा, मैंने कहा था ना, यही असली मजा है।En: Rohan looked into Nishta's eyes and said, "See, I told you, this is the real fun."Hi: " कार्तिक भी अब इसी अनुभव में खो गया था और उसने पहली बार निष्ठा की सेवरिटी को सराहा।En: Even Karthik was now lost in this experience and appreciated Nishta's vivacity for the first time.Hi: निष्ठा ने उन दोनों को देखकर मुस्कुराते हुए कहा, "शायद जिंदगी का असली सुख इसी में है, अनपेक्षित क्षणों को जीने में।En: Nishta looked at both of them and said with a smile, "Perhaps the real joy in life lies in living those unexpected moments."Hi: "वो मरीन ड्राइव की उस शाम को कभी नहीं भूल पाई।En: She could never forget that evening at Marine Drive.Hi: उस दिन उसने सीखा कि कभी-कभी अनचाहे पल भी हमारी जिंदगी का हिस्सा बन जाते हैं।En: That day, she learned that sometimes undesired moments also become a part of our lives.Hi: अब वो मुंबई की खुली बाहों में अपने नए सफर के लिए तैयार थी, निश्चिंत और आशवस्त।En: Now she was ready for her new journey in the open arms of Mumbai, carefree and assured. Vocabulary Words:dampness: नमीeager: चाहrelaxing: आराम सेresponsibility: जिम्माcompetitive: प्रतिस्पर्धीenthusiasm: जोशsarcastic: व्यंग्यात्मकconcern: चिंताexcitement: उत्साहraindrops: बूंदेंseashore: समुद्र के किनारेvivacity: सेवरिटीunexpected: अनपेक्षितundesired: अनचाहेcarefree: निश्चिंतassured: आशवस्तmonsoon: मानसूनwaves: लहरोंfast-paced: तेजdrenched: भीगनेplayful: मस्तीखोरprepared: तैयारintensified: तेजlaughter: हंसीhit: टकरातीappreciated: सराहाjoy: सुखliving: जीनेforgot: भूल पाईjourney: सफर

Fluent Fiction - Hindi: A Raindrop Partnership: Renovating Mumbai's Gateway Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/hi/episode/2026-07-31-22-34-02-hi Story Transcript:Hi: बारिश की बूंदें अनगिनत मोतियों की तरह मुंबई की सड़कों पर बिछी हुई थीं।En: The raindrops were scattered like countless pearls on the streets of Mumbai.Hi: गेटवे ऑफ इंडिया के आस-पास फुहारें लोगों को छतरियों के नीचे छुपाने पर मजबूर कर रही थीं।En: The showers around the Gateway of India were forcing people to hide under umbrellas.Hi: माहौल में हल्की ठंडक और ताज्जुब की लहर थी।En: There was a wave of light chill and astonishment in the atmosphere.Hi: आदतन, अपने चेहरे पर एक मुस्कान लिए, आरव अपने कामकाजी बैग को संभालते हुए गेटवे ऑफ इंडिया की ओर बढ़ा।En: Habitually, with a smile on his face, Aarav managed his work bag and proceeded towards the Gateway of India.Hi: वह अपने सामने खड़े भव्य द्वार को देखकर दंग रह गया।En: He was amazed as he looked at the grand gateway in front of him.Hi: इस मौसम में, यह और भी शानदार लग रहा था।En: In this weather, it looked even more magnificent.Hi: उसके साथ कदम से कदम मिलाते हुए मीरा भी वहां पहुंची।En: Keeping pace with him, Meera also arrived there.Hi: उनकी मुलाकात एक खास उद्देश्य के लिए थी - एक ऐतिहासिक इमारत के नवीकरण के लिए सहयोग का प्रस्ताव लेकर।En: Their meeting was for a special purpose - to bring forth a collaboration proposal for the renovation of a historic building.Hi: आरव युवा और जोशीला था।En: Aarav was young and enthusiastic.Hi: यह उसके लिए बड़ी चुनौती थी और एक अवसर भी, जिसके माध्यम से वह अपनी क्षमताओं को साबित कर सकता था।En: It was a big challenge for him and also an opportunity through which he could prove his abilities.Hi: दूसरी ओर, अनुभवी मीरा अपने कार्यों के लिए जानी जाती थी।En: On the other hand, the experienced Meera was known for her work.Hi: आरव थोड़ा चिंतित था, क्योंकि उसे मालूम था कि बारिश ने उनकी मुलाकात में विलंब कर दिया था।En: Aarav was a little concerned because he knew that the rain had delayed their meeting.Hi: कुछ देर की औपचारिक बातों के बाद, आरव ने प्रस्ताव की फाइल निकाली।En: After some formal conversation, Aarav took out the project file.Hi: "मीरा जी, यह परियोजना हमारे समय की धरोहर होगी," उसने उत्साहभरे स्वर में कहा।En: "Meera ji, this project will be a legacy of our time," he said in an enthusiastic tone.Hi: लेकिन मीरा उसके अनुभव की कमी से थोड़ा सतर्क थी।En: But Meera was a bit cautious due to his lack of experience.Hi: "यह प्रोजेक्ट बड़ा है, आरव।En: "This project is big, Aarav.Hi: सोच-समझ कर कदम उठाना जरूरी है," मीरा ने जवाब दिया।En: It's important to take thoughtful steps," Meera replied.Hi: आरव ने समझा कि उसे अपनी क्षमता साबित करनी होगी।En: Aarav understood that he would have to prove his capability.Hi: उसने मीरा के समक्ष एक नया प्रस्ताव रखा, जिसमें संभावित समस्याओं और उनके समाधान का विस्तार से वर्णन था।En: He presented a new proposal to Meera, detailing potential problems and their solutions.Hi: जैसे ही उसकी बातें चलती रहीं, उनकी दोनों की आंखें विशाल गेटवे पर गईं, जो ताकत और धैर्य का प्रतीक था।En: As his words continued, both of their eyes went to the magnificent gateway, symbolizing strength and patience.Hi: "मीरा जी, मैं इस प्रोजेक्ट के लिए पूरी तरह से समर्पित हूं," उसने आत्मविश्वास के साथ कहा।En: "Meera ji, I am fully committed to this project," he said with confidence.Hi: मीरा के चेहरे पर एक हल्की मुस्कान आई।En: A slight smile appeared on Meera's face.Hi: उसने आरव की आंखों में एक दृढ़ संकल्प और जुनून देखा।En: She saw determination and passion in Aarav's eyes.Hi: "ठीक है, आरव," मीरा ने आखिरकार हामी भरी, "हम इसे एक साथ करेंगे।En: "Alright, Aarav," Meera finally agreed, "We will do this together.Hi: लेकिन हर कदम पर एक साथ काम करना होगा।En: But we need to work together at every step."Hi: " यह कहते हुए उसने आरव का हौसला बढ़ाया।En: Saying this, she encouraged Aarav.Hi: इस समझौते ने न केवल आरव को विश्वास दिया, बल्कि मीरा को नए दृष्टिकोण और ऊर्जा की तलाश में एक नया साथी भी मिला।En: This agreement not only gave Aarav confidence but also provided Meera with a new partner in search of fresh perspectives and energy.Hi: वो दिन आरव के लिए केवल पेशेवर उपलब्धि का नहीं बल्कि व्यक्तिगत विश्वास के एक नए अध्याय की शुरुआत का दिन था।En: That day marked not only a professional achievement but also the beginning of a new chapter of personal confidence for Aarav.Hi: गेटवे ऑफ इंडिया की तनाबाना उनकी नई साझेदारी का साक्षी बना।En: The Gateway of India bore witness to their new partnership. Vocabulary Words:scattered: बिछी हुईcountless: अनगिनतastonishment: ताज्जुबhabitually: आदतनgrand: भव्यmagnificent: शानदारproceeded: बढ़ाrenovation: नवीकरणenthusiastic: जोशीलाopportunity: अवसरprove: साबितcapability: क्षमताlegacy: धरोहरthoughtful: सोच-समझ करsymbolizing: प्रतीकcommitment: समर्पितconfidence: आत्मविश्वासencouraged: हौसला बढ़ायाperspectives: दृष्टिकोणachievement: उपलब्धिchapter: अध्यायwitness: साक्षीshowers: फुहारेंchill: ठंडकexperience: अनुभवconcerned: चिंतितdelayed: विलंबformal: औपचारिकdetailed: विस्तार सेenthusiastic: उत्साहभरे

//The Wire//2300Z July 29, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WAR IN MIDDLE EAST EXPANDS TO AFRICA AS DRONE ATTACK REPORTED IN EGYPT. IRAN CONDUCTS MORE MISSILE STRIKES ON AMERICAN BASES IN MIDDLE EAST, UNITED STATES BEGINS RESPONSE THIS EVENING. CYBERATTACK TARGETS MINNESOTA WATER SUPPLY.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Middle East: Overnight Iran conducted missile and drone attacks throughout the region, targeting American positions. Muwaffaq al Salti was hit again, along with the American base in Erbil. After this series of attacks, the White House has indicated that the US will be retaliating soon, and as of this report American airstrikes have resumed within Iran.Egypt: This morning, explosions were reported onboard a floating natural gas storage/processing platform in Damietta Port. An American-registered Floating Storage and Regassification Unit (FSRU) was reportedly struck by at least one munition, which resulted in several follow-on explosions. Separately, another tanker vessel was reportedly struck in the same general area. As of this afternoon firefighting boats were still cooling the superstructure and most of the topside equipment onboard the two vessels.Analyst Comment: Egyptian authorities have stated that these explosions were an industrial accident, however a video taken by a crew member onboard the vessel that was struck confirms that the incident was a drone attack. Regardless, nobody has claimed this as a targeting effort yet, and if this was Iran, it would be the longest-range attack they have conducted so far during the war. As a result, it's possible (or even likely) that these drones were launched from somewhere closer than Iran. Lebanon is the only wild guess that makes sense, as it's a straight shot across the water to the target.-HomeFront-USA: Yesterday evening American Airlines announced a nationwide ground stop of all of their aircraft due to an IT outage. The FAA implemented the emergency action due to an unspecified loss of connectivity between American Airlines aircraft and ground control systems. Mass delays were reported nationwide while the outage was being fixed, and after several hours systems were restored.Minnesota: This afternoon a large scale cyberattack was reported targeting water treatment and processing systems throughout the state. The cyberattack was only disclosed to the public this morning, but initially took place on July 26/27. The immediate impact of this cyberattack resulted in power outages and the control of automated water management systems being affected. As of this afternoon, the towns of Braham, Maple Plain, Plymouth, and south St. Paul have all reported being impacted by the cyberattack, with many districts throughout the state remaining under a boil-water advisory.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: CENTCOM and the media are calling Iran's actions last night a "surprise attack", but in reality it was no different than all of the other attacks conducted so far. CENTCOM has stated that all missiles were intercepted, but locals on the ground have provided photos of large fires and smoke plumes being emitted from American bases. Nevertheless, theses attacks probably pushed the decision to be made regarding a return to strikes, in some form. The war officially expanding to now include Egypt is very likely to complicate the situation further...this one war involving Iran has now technically spread to a total of three continents: Asia, Europe, and now northern Africa. Of course, one or two drone strikes does not equal a large scale operation, but back in 1942 Doolittle's Raid didn't either. It was meant to send a message, much like the extremely long-range attack that was carried out in Egypt today.Egypt certainly received that message lout and clear, but it is questionable as to if the significance of this small attack was understood by the United States. Though the usual tit-for-tat cycle has been disrupted somewhat over the past week, at a more strategic level all indications are in place pointing toward a continuation of what's been ongoing since the ceasefire was broken: Tit-for-tat strikes continuing that stay below the level of all-out war, but also resulting in no diplomatic solution for the time being. All the while the war slowly creeps outside the bounds of the region, and the message becomes more clear: From the Nile Delta to Mumbai...nowhere is safe from the impact of war.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

Fluent Fiction - Hindi: Power Outage Sparks Innovation at Mumbai Coffee Roastery Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/hi/episode/2026-07-30-22-34-01-hi Story Transcript:Hi: मुंबई की गहमागहमी भरी सड़कों के बीच एक आरामदायक कोने में स्थित था 'मुंबई कॉफ़ी रोस्टरी'।En: In the bustling streets of Mumbai, there was a cozy corner called 'Mumbai Coffee Roastery'.Hi: बाहर हल्की-फुल्की बारिश हो रही थी, और अंदर ताज़ा कॉफ़ी की खुशबू चारों ओर बिखरी हुई थी।En: Light rain was falling outside, while the aroma of fresh coffee filled the air inside.Hi: गर्म रोशनी और आकर्षक इंटीरियर ने इस जगह को बैठक के लिए परिपूर्ण बना दिया था।En: The warm lighting and attractive interior made it a perfect place for a meeting.Hi: आर्यन, एक ऊर्जावान विपणन पेशेवर, कॉफ़ी कप के साथ मेज पर रखे आइडिया स्केच को घूर रहा था।En: Aryan, an energetic marketing professional, was staring at the idea sketch placed on the table with a coffee cup.Hi: उसके पास एक शानदार आईडिया था, और आज के प्रेजेंटेशन में उसे सबको प्रभावित करना था।En: He had a brilliant idea and aimed to impress everyone in today's presentation.Hi: उसके सामने बैठी थी माया, एक तार्किक परियोजना प्रबंधक, जिसे शांति से बैठ कर आर्यन की प्लानिंग की सफलता सुनिश्चित करनी थी।En: Sitting across from him was Maya, a logical project manager, who was there to ensure the success of Aryan's planning with a calm demeanor.Hi: बैठक शुरू होते ही योजना बना रही थी कि तभी बिजली चली गई।En: As the meeting began, plans were being made when suddenly the power went out.Hi: कमरे में हलचल मच गई।En: There was a commotion in the room.Hi: लैपटॉप और प्रोजेक्टर बेकार पड़े थे।En: The laptops and projectors were useless.Hi: आर्यन के चेहरे पर थोड़ी चिंता आई, लेकिन जल्दी ही उसने स्थिति को संभालने की ठानी।En: A bit of concern appeared on Aryan's face, but he quickly decided to handle the situation.Hi: उसने व्हाइटबोर्ड का सहारा लिया और टीम को सहज रूप से विचार-मंथन में शामिल होने के लिए आमंत्रित किया।En: He resorted to a whiteboard and invited the team to seamlessly engage in brainstorming.Hi: आर्यन ने धीरे-धीरे अपनी सोच साझा करनी शुरू की।En: Aryan slowly started sharing his thoughts.Hi: उसने सरल शब्दों में अपने विचारों को टीम के समझाया।En: He explained his ideas to the team in simple terms.Hi: माया ने उसकी बातों का समर्थन किया और रणनीतिक दृष्टिकोण से योजनाओं का संबंध बनाया।En: Maya supported his words and strategically linked the plans.Hi: उसके द्वारा दिए गए साहसी प्रस्ताव ने कमरे में सबका ध्यान आकर्षित किया।En: Her bold proposals captured everyone's attention in the room.Hi: उस दृश्य ने बिना किसी तकनीकी सहायता के भी उनकी कल्पना शक्ति को जागरूक कर दिया।En: That scene awakened their imagination even without any technical aid.Hi: आर्यन का विचार मोहर लगा, जिसमें माया के योजनाबद्ध दृष्टिकोण ने नया जोश भरा।En: Aryan's idea was approved, infused with new vigor through Maya's planned approach.Hi: अब टीम नई योजना के साथ बाजार में उतरने की तैयारी में जुट गई थी।En: Now the team was preparing to enter the market with a new plan.Hi: इस अप्रत्याशित स्थिति ने आर्यन को यह सिखाया कि कठिन परिस्थितियों में कैसे परिस्थिति का लाभ उठाना है।En: This unexpected situation taught Aryan how to leverage the circumstances in challenging situations.Hi: माया और उसकी टीम ने उसे यह विश्वास दिलाया कि कभी-कभी साधारणतम परिस्थितियां भी बेहतरीन अवसर बन सकती हैं।En: Maya and her team instilled the confidence that sometimes the simplest situations can turn into the greatest opportunities.Hi: आखिरकार, फ़र्म ने उसके साहसी विचार को अपनाया और एक नई शुरुआत का आगाज़ हुआ।En: Ultimately, the firm adopted his daring idea, marking the beginning of a new start. Vocabulary Words:bustling: गहमागहमीcozy: आरामदायकaroma: खुशबूinterior: इंटीरियरenergetic: ऊर्जावानbrilliant: शानदारensure: सुनिश्चितcommotion: हलचलconcern: चिंताresorted: सहाराseamlessly: सहज रूप सेstrategically: रणनीतिकbold: साहसीproposals: प्रस्तावawakened: जाग्रूकvigor: जोशinfused: भराleverage: लाभ उठानाcircumstances: परिस्थितिinstilled: विश्वास दिलानाconfidence: विश्वासopportunities: अवसरadopted: अपनायाdaring: साहसीbeginnings: आगाज़logical: तार्किकdemeanor: शांतिunexpected: अप्रत्याशितsuccess: सफलताpresentation: प्रेजेंटेशन

It's The Stacks Book Club day, and we're joined by nonfiction editor Julianna Haubner to discuss our July pick, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. This book follows the families of Annawadi, a makeshift settlement near the Mumbai airport, as they strive toward a better life amidst tragedy, global recessions, economic upheaval, and social issues. Julianna and I chat about a journalist's responsibility to their audience, what it means for a work of nonfiction to read “like a novel,” and how we think this book would be received if it were written in 2026.There are spoilers in this episode.Make sure you listen to the end of the episode to find out what our August book club pick is!You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks website: https://www.thestackspodcast.com/2026/7/29/ep-435-behind-the-beautiful-foreversConnect with Julianna: InstagramConnect with The Stacks: Instagram | Threads | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Substack | YoutubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Road accidents are a leading cause of death and injury around the world, and in 2020, the UN General Assembly set a target to reduce road deaths by 50% by 2030. Claudia Hammond is joined by BBC Health reporter Philippa Roxby to look at new research which explores how road injury trends have changed globally over the past three decades, and discuss what these trends mean for public health and safety.India is facing shortages of important chemotherapy drugs as the price of the precious metal platinum has soared. Journalist Chhavi Sachdev reports on the situation from Mumbai.The prediction market platform Kalshi has announced that they will now be allowing users to place bets on the outcomes of clinical trials and FDA approvals. Claudia speaks with Nikola Biller-Andorno, Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Zurich, to understand what this could mean for clinical research going forward.Also what is really happening to the body when it goes to space? New research suggests our cells react to microgravity in surprising ways. And how introducing fish to rice fields in Senegal could halt the spread of the neglected tropical disease, schistosomiasis.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producers: Georgia Christie and Jonathan Blackwell

Over the last couple of months, we've seen students take to the streets in Delhi, Mumbai, Jodhpur, Bhopal, Kolkata and several other cities, protesting against an education system plagued by paper leaks and policies they believe encourage corruption. Last weekend, those protests culminated in India's education minister stepping down. The government also acknowledged that the education system has serious gaps and announced a high-powered task force, headed by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, to address them.So in today's Finshots, we'll explain how exam paper leaks turned into a thriving industry in India and what it might take to even slightly fix the problem.Sign up for FREE insurance masterclass by Ditto

First, we speak to The Indian Express' Sukrita Baruah about the devastating floods in Assam that have claimed dozens of lives, displaced lakhs of people, and triggered one of the state's largest rescue operations in recent years. She explains what has made this year's floods particularly severe, the scale of the destruction, and the challenges that still lie ahead.Next, we talk to The Indian Express' Mohamed Thaver about a sophisticated "boss scam" in Mumbai, where a senior company executive transferred more than Rs 10 crore after receiving WhatsApp messages that appeared to come from his employer. We discuss how the fraud unfolded, why companies remain vulnerable, and what businesses can do to prevent similar cyberattacks. (11:05)And in the end, we look at former Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's first appearance in Parliament after his resignation, where he received a rousing welcome from BJP MPs even as the Opposition protested and repeatedly disrupted Lok Sabha proceedings. (23:45)Hosted by Ichha SharmaProduced and written by Shashank Bhargava, Niharika Nanda and Ichha SharmaEdited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

This interview features Mehek Malhotra, founder of Giggling Monkey Studio, discussing how her Indian heritage and the psychology of color inform her narrative-driven design work. She describes color as an innate, universal language—akin to a lifelong tattoo—and uses the "masala dabba" (spice box) metaphor to explain India's consistent yet versatile palette. A central theme is her philosophy of "serious play," which encourages designers to reclaim the judgment-free creativity of childhood to develop original, commercially viable ideas. Mehek also explores her preference for "lived-in" aesthetics over sterile perfection, reflecting on projects for IKEA and Google that translate personal memories into universal experiences. The colorful and brilliant designs of Mehek Malhotra, a young designer based in Mumbai, India, are well-known for their fusion of modern aesthetics with traditional Indian elements. Malhotra, who has experience in graphic design, visual communication, and drawing, has made a name for herself in the competitive Indian design industry. Her portfolio features a wide range of projects in fields as diverse as product design, packaging, brand identity, and more.India is where Mehek Malhotra spent her formative years. Her early years were spent absorbing visual culture, during which her budding interest in art and design flourished. She continued her education by earning a Bachelor of Design degree with a concentration in fashion communication and graphic design, while being awarded the best graducation project award at NIFT in 2018. Her formal education laid the groundwork for her to develop her abilities and explore other forms of expression.She was awarded 25 under 25 in 2016 by TATA Nano and Campus Diaries for the field of Art + Design and was recognised in the Power 25 List of the Rolling Stone Magazine in 2023. In 2025, she received a Special Mention in the Forbes 30 Under 30 India list for Design, acknowledging her growing influence and contribution to creative culture in the country.Mehek started the graphic design, illustration, and branding studio Giggling Monkey Studio. She has done work for well-known customers like major corporations, young businesses, and non-governmental organisations through her studio. Malhotra's work is readily recognisable for its emphasis on whimsical shapes and vivid patterns. The creative methods used by Giggling Monkey Studio have earned them praise and a dedicated following; with clients such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, and others, as well as smaller businesses, to help them find their creative voice and place in Indian markets. The studio loves to collaborate and produce work for music; this has led to numerous projects for various artists, most recently with the Berklee Indian Ensemble, whose album was nominated for the 2023 Grammys.She is also the Creative Lead for India at Canva. Canva is a website that lets people design and makes beautiful graphics. This makes design more accessible for everyone to use and understand.In 2025, Mehek brought her perspective on food, memory, and domesticity to the international stage. At Salone del Mobile — Milan Design Week — she collaborated with Maurizio Tentella on Eat With Your Mouth Open, a lived-in dining room installation created in partnership with IKEA. The project wove together Italian and Indian cultural references around food and home, drawing on the stories of both their grandmothers. The installation ran April 21–26, 2025, and invited audiences to sit with the idea that a dining table is never just a table — it is where culture is passed down, arguments are had, and love is fed.Numerous organisations and publications have recognised and  to name a few. Mehek's passion for art and her dedication to her craft have propelled her to the top of her field, and she continues to inspire and entertain audiences with her unique and captivating work, making her craft more accessible and understood so more people can aspire to work as creatives in India.Support the showThank you for listening! Follow us through our website or social media!https://www.thecolorauthority.com/podcasthttps://www.instagram.com/the_color_authority_/https://www.linkedin.com/company/78120219/admin/

First, we speak with The Indian Express' Jatin Anand about Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. He discusses the events of the past week and how they culminated in the government accepting the demands of the students and the Cockroach Janta Party, who had been protesting for over a month.Next, we speak with The Indian Express' Heena Khandelwal about how the arrival of a bureaucrat in Mumbai led to a major crackdown on Maharashtra's food industry. She explains how, in less than two months, the state's Food and Drug Administration carried out multiple inspections across the state and seized food stocks worth nearly Rs 50 crore. (14:26)Lastly, we talk about the floods caused by heavy rainfall in Gujarat, which have claimed nearly 40 lives and left many others injured or missing. (25:25)Hosted by Niharika NandaProduced by Ichha Sharma, Niharika Nanda, and Shashank BhargavaEdited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

“There is the burden of being homeless and the burden of being judged for it.” — Saumya Roy on poverty in America How does the world look at America in the MAGA age? This is our third conversation drawn from How We See It, a collection of essays about America from the excellent new publication The Dial. In the first, The Dial's Paris-based editor Madeleine Schwartz offered a very French version about the oddities of Trump's America. In the second, the Turkish novelist and commentator Kaya Genç gave us his view from Istanbul. Today, we have a take on America from the Indian-born Saumya Roy, Al Jazeera's San Francisco correspondent and the author of Castaway Mountain, a book about the wastepickers of her hometown Mumbai. Saumya Roy's inside-out America is the one glimpsed from the back of a San Francisco cab, whose Indian driver told her he'd walked here from Mumbai. In her Dial essay, Roy compares the poverty of her hometown, Mumbai — the subject of Castaway Mountain — with the homelessness outside that San Francisco cab. The comparison isn't quite what you'd expect. Mumbai's poverty is vaster and more dehumanizing — a hundred thousand street people against San Francisco's eight thousand. But in Mumbai Roy finds a social kind of poverty, whereas in San Francisco it's atomized and isolating. In the land of personal responsibility, she reports, there's a double burden of being on the street: being homeless, and being judged for it. Some of the street people Roy meets even shower at a gym each Christmas so their families won't know their predicament. And yet Roy still recognizes the American dream. She reports that it often burns brighter in a Mumbai slum — where a young gig worker told her he wants to be “the Elon Musk of India” — than it does in America itself. That dream can be real, she says, just as it can be cracked. From the back of her San Francisco cab, Saumya Roy sees both Americas. Five Takeaways •       “I Walked from Mumbai to the US.” A cab driver's five-word answer contains the whole story. In the popular imagination, Indian America is the America of tech CEOs and startup founders; beneath it are millions — many undocumented — who chased the same dream, work small jobs, and were left behind by the wave. San Francisco, Roy observes, is a boom and bust town — dot-com, social media, now AI — and the American dream is a wave: catch it and you make an amazing life; miss it and you may end up sleeping in the subway car of the world's richest city. The dream, she says, can be fulfilled — and the dream can be cracked.•       The Double Burden. Mumbai's poverty is vaster and more dehumanizing than anything in America — children dying of tuberculosis in their teens, perhaps 100,000 people on the street against San Francisco's eight thousand. But it is social: even at a distance you see cooking smells, cradles, families living together on the sidewalk. American homelessness struck Roy as profoundly isolated — everything owned in a shopping cart, riding the train aimlessly because no one is waiting anywhere. And the ideology of personal responsibility cuts both ways: if success is earned, failure must be deserved. Hence the double burden — being homeless, and being judged for it — and the people who shower at a gym each Christmas so their families won't learn where they live.•       What Is Growth For? The AI boom is minting $250 million research salaries and trillion-dollar IPOs that will change the face of San Francisco for decades — while polls show seventy to eighty percent of Americans fear losing their jobs to AI investment, and a single medical expense can capsize a family. Young Americans watch the markers of their parents' lives — a home, affordable gas, a job within a year of graduation — drift out of reach. Roy's question is the one policymakers keep dodging: what is growth really for, if it doesn't translate into a better quality of life for the people who need it most?•       The Mumbai Model. Roy's editor at The Dial asked why she wrote “homeless” for San Francisco but not for Mumbai — and the answer became the essay. In Roy's own lifetime, Mumbai has moved more than 100,000 people off its sidewalks and railway tracks: not by sweeps, evictions, and demonization, but by involving communities — especially women — and giving people confidence that the housing they moved to would be safe and secure. Meanwhile only ten to twelve percent of San Francisco's homeless report substance use or mental illness as the cause; eighty-eight percent are simply priced out, often working two or three jobs. As Roy puts it: they deserve a hug more than they deserve to be evicted.•       The Dream Burns Brighter Abroad. Reporting on unemployment in a Mumbai slum, Roy climbed a steep staircase to interview a young gig worker and asked him his dream. “I want to be the Elon Musk of India,” he said. The American dream, Roy suggests, now burns brighter in Mumbai and the Gulf than in America itself — where the darkness is emotional rather than economic, a mourning for the idea of America rather than its numbers. Neither MAGA nor doom-monger, Roy watches a country that leads the world in innovation while paying developers not to build wind farms, and concludes that what people everywhere are grappling for — left, right, and abroad — is a system that reflects the crises they actually live. About the Guest Saumya Roy is Al Jazeera's San Francisco-based correspondent, covering technology and the environment. A former Mumbai journalist who co-founded the microfinance nonprofit Vandana Foundation, she is the author of Castaway Mountain: Love and Loss Among the Wastepickers of Mumbai (Astra House, 2021), one of NPR's best books of the year. Her essay on Mumbai, San Francisco, and the American dream appears in How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump (The New Press, June 2026), edited by Madeleine Schwartz. References: •       How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump, edited by Madeleine Schwartz (The New Press, June 2026). Adam Shatz: “It is often foreigners who understand us best.”•       Castaway Mountain: Love and Loss Among the Wastepickers of Mumbai by Saumya Roy — her acclaimed account of the lives built on Mumbai's Deonar garbage mountain, an NPR best book of 2021.•       Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo — the Mumbai classic in whose tradition Roy's reporting stands.•       Madeleine Schwartz and The Dial — the volume's editor, whose own Keen On America conversation about the book preceded this one.•       Stephen Marche — the old friend of the show whose re...

‘Their love was so innocent, so sweet, so organic and we just wanted them to end up together because even they knew that some of the queer films always end in tragedy and they were worried that something like that's going to happen but that didn't happen and so people were really happy with it.' Nikki Bedi speaks to Rohan Kanawade, the acclaimed director whose debut feature Cactus Pears or Sabar Bonda, made history as the first Marathi-language film to premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. It also became the first Indian drama to win the festival's International Grand Jury Prize. Set in Kanawade's home state of Maharashtra, Cactus Pears is a groundbreaking Marathi-language love story between two men. Drawing on his experience of mourning his father, he reveals how grief, memory and identity found their way into his film. He also talks about growing up in a poor area of Mumbai with parents who accepted and supported his sexuality.Thank you to the Arts Hour team for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with director Christopher Nolan, actor Diego Calva and the legendary musician Ringo Starr. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. Presenter: Nikki Bedi Producer: Farhana Haider Editor: Damon RoseGet in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.(Image: Rohan Kanawade. Credit: Getty)

Member states of the International Criminal Court have voted to remove its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, by an overwhelming majority. The court's oversight body concluded in June that he had committed serious misconduct in connection to allegations of sexual abuse. Mr Khan has repeatedly denied all the allegations against him. Also: Ukraine opens a probe after a deadly Russian ballistic missile attack at a defence event near Kyiv that had been heavily promoted, despite the risks. Israeli settlers attack several Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank following a major confrontation that left six people dead. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated across France and Spain as intense wildfires continue to burn across Europe. Student protests in India spread beyond Dehli to other cities with thousands marching for education reform in Mumbai and Calcutta. A special report looking at the human cost of South Korea's ultra-convenient overnight deliveries. Canada withdraws invitation of US dignitaries to a joint bridge-opening celebration after Donald Trump's latest tariff threat on Ottawa. And how the book genre "romantasy" went from a niche online interest to one of publishing's biggest commercial success stories.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.ukPhoto: An exterior view of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the Netherlands. Credit: LINA SELG/EPA/Shutterstock

This Hafta episode features author Chetan Bhagat unpacking why a youth-led street protest snowballed the way it did, and what it reveals about how anger travels online.Abhinandan Sekhri opens with a mea culpa on having dismissed “Gen Z” too readily. Bhagat is explicit in his assertion that the protest itself “would have been limited” were it not for visuals like that of a Delhi Police officer in riot gear and a helmet, wielding a baton, chasing a 16-year-old girl. It was footage like this, not the underlying policy grievances, that he calls the “content gold” – the emotionally engaging visual that made the protest go viral.Drawing on examples from Gujarat, Satara, and a bouncer-contractor's Instagram post racking up 400,000 likes, Bhagat argues this generation instinctively performs for the camera – as captured in a viral Mumbai clip where teenagers laugh off a cop threatening to plant drugs on them. His point is that virality isn't accidental; an audience-literate generation produces it.A recurring metaphor – an argument that "it isn't really about a dirty plate" – is used to explain why the protest isn't really about paper leaks, even if that's the government's chosen frame. Finally, Bhagat also reflects on being called a “Modi bhakt” then later a critic, and his defence of centrism as pragmatism rather than fence-sitting.Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan .Sound by Naresh. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Every time this child was proven wrong, he learned something new." In this episode, Andrew Stotz continues his conversation with Balaji Reddie as they explore two essential elements of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge: the Theory of Knowledge and Psychology. Through the memorable story of a young boy trying to understand how his father's scooter starts, Balaji illustrates how we build theories, test them through experience, and improve them through learning. The discussion also explores why PDSA begins with theory, why experience alone is not enough, and why understanding how people learn is fundamental to leading improvement. Whether you're new to Deming or deep into his work, this episode offers practical insights into how better questions lead to better knowledge and, ultimately, better management.   Are you ready to learn more about the System of Profound Knowledge? Check out DemingNEXT online learning! https://deming.org/learn/demingnext/   TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Balaji Reddie, an educator and trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming, and quality management generally. The topic for today is: The theory of knowledge and psychology. Take it away.   0:00:29.8 Balaji Reddie: Well, thank you. Good morning, Andrew. And it's great to continue our series. So the last time we met, we had begun with the Profound Knowledge, where we said that Dr. Deming brought together four, seemingly disconnected, sciences. He never invented any single one of them, but he saw the connections, and he created, what you could say is, a bootstrap theory of management, if I may say so, a very all-encompassing view of things happening around you. That's why he had no other word to describe it except profound. Because you see things that you normally would not see. That's what we said the last time. And when he proposed that, all of a sudden, I told you the funny thing was that experts in each of those sciences jumped in. I think they realized that they were caught napping, that they did not see the connections, and they did not see a bare minimum set of competencies that you need to have in order to understand things in their entirety. It was very, very... It was amazing that he actually could put that all together.   0:01:44.3 Balaji Reddie: So we started off with the four sciences, in no order of preference. We said here... His words were appreciation for a system. That means, taking into consideration the fact that everything... Having a holistic view, that what we see is not an event but an eventuality, that there's a huge big system behind it. Whatever we get to see in front of our eyes, we're just getting to see the effect. So appreciating that, that's what he said, for a system, a systemic view. I just used a different word, I said connectedness. And I said that from now on, we say that there are no events, there are only eventualities. Which means when something happens in front of our eyes, we always question... We bring in the concept of time and space; that the origins of this, what I'm seeing in front of my eyes, lie somewhere else and maybe actually in a different time frame. So I need to study deeper in order to understand why I'm seeing this in front of my eyes. And you gave that fantastic example of coffee beans, where you said everything has to happen at the right time. So that was the first one.   0:02:54.1 Balaji Reddie: Second one, was about understanding variation. And I would say, that's statistical thinking. I think around 1998, I saw someone come out with the definition of statistical thinking. And they said that it's a holistic view of looking at a process, that everything in the world, happens in the form of a process, and all processes are subject to variation. And understanding and reducing that variation, is synonymous to increasing quality. Now, I'd just like to make a slight change there. Yes, all processes are subject to variation, but talking about reducing... I think, understanding and managing that variation, would lead to better quality. And his entire insistence was understanding variation. Although, let me tell you this, in Henry Neave's book, he wrote about this, where he said that in one of the weekend chats that they had with Deming, he made a statement that if I had to reduce my message to managers in two words, I would say: reduce variation. And this, I've heard from both Henry Neave and David Kerridge. For those who are unaware of who David Kerridge was, because he passed away, I think, around 2018 or 2019, I can't remember... Or maybe before. I'm forgetting the year.   0:04:32.1 Balaji Reddie: But this was... He was from Aberdeen, Scotland. And people used to say, he's like an unofficial person who could be the successor to Deming. So he wrote a lot of wonderful papers. So David Kerridge, Henry, and I, were sitting together having dinner, and they were talking about Deming, and they said that, yeah, he did not... There were some things where he could get really, really upset about when he... About performance appraisals. But there are some things when he spoke of Shewhart, Walter Shewhart, he spoke in a very different tone. And then came this topic, that when we told him that you said reduce variation, he said, "I never said that." They said, "But you said it. We have it... We wrote it down, both Henry and I." And he said, "I could have said that in a context, but I don't think I meant it in that way." So for the record, yes, he uttered it; but he meant it differently. I'm quite sure he said to understand and manage that variation.   0:05:35.4 Balaji Reddie: So what is that managing variation? Okay. We saw this last time, in the very narrow sense of the term, that is when Walter Shewhart invented the control chart. He said there are two kinds of variation that exist: natural variation and unnatural variation. And to distinguish between these two, he created the control chart, which was based on... It was an empirical formula, and people confused it to be a statistical thing. He demarcated, brought in two lines, what he called as the upper control limit and lower control limit. And he said as long as the outcomes of any process or system, if you could measure them and you're plotting them on a graph, as long as they lie within these limits, well, that's the natural behavior of the process or system under study. And the moment their performance crosses the limits, one of these limits on the higher side or the lower side, then you can say there's something unique, special, that has happened. So he used the term, random variation, and assignable cause variation. Because he said you could assign a particular cause to the points that lie outside limits. But when you are studying the variation that lie within limits, the variation that lies within limits, then you can't ascribe a particular cause. There is a system of causes acting. This particular difference in approach...   0:06:58.1 Andrew Stotz: That's a great point. The assignable thing is a great, great point. It really helped me just understand it better.   0:07:04.7 Balaji Reddie: Oh, yeah. Because you could assign a particular, that's why he said assignable. And this is random. Assignable, has its advantage that you can isolate it. And initially, he said you could isolate, and you could eliminate, that cause because it is something which is alien to the system under study. And one by one by one, when he said you eliminate all those causes, you land up with a system or a process that fluctuates only within limits, and he called that as a statistically controlled process. Now, he said your real work begins when you start looking into the reasons for each of those points lying within limits, and I made that statement. You don't have one cause, you have a system of causes. Here's where we studied systems the last time, and I'm just refreshing all of this. I said that in a system, you have interconnectedness, you have interdependencies. And then cause and effect are not closely related in time or space. You have synergistic relationships. So when you start studying, it becomes very, very complicated. Because the performance of each of those causes is also subject to variation. So you can never, ever tell with absolute certainty, what is causing the system variation. Because each of the causes is part of a bigger system. So he made that statement that the complete knowledge of any process or system, is unknown and unknowable. He was not being pessimistic; he was being realistic. We discussed this the last time. And so I said, what do we do then? Yeah, we'll come to that. But now comes the other part, which gets really, really interesting.   0:08:46.7 Andrew Stotz: By the way, I want to... Before you move on from the variation, I want to add something. But continue on.   0:08:55.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay. So he said the reason for the point lying outside... And I said it's assignable, what Dr. Deming called as, special cause variation. You can assign a cause, and I said it's alien to the system under study. And I started by saying you can eliminate it. And even Walter Shewhart began by saying, eliminate it. But now, I'm going back on my words slightly. If you eliminate that special cause, it could be a special cause for the system under study, but it could be the common cause of another system which is related to this. And so what can you do? Well, here's the best part that comes in. You reduce the effect of that cause, to the extent that it does not cause any harmful variation here, to the system under study. And that, Andrew, is optimization. "I want this, and I want that", not, "I want this, or I want that." So I need that.   0:10:01.0 Balaji Reddie: Because I can begin with eliminating, but then I have to keep my eyes and ears open. Because this is what I did in my own company when I started implementing all of this. I'll be honest, I drew a control chart, and when I found points lying outside limits and we discovered causes, I used to eliminate them. But since I was exposed to Profound Knowledge, and what Dr. Deming said about optimization, I kept my eyes and ears open to any change that we observed in the company, anywhere. If I... Even if I got a feedback within a day, two week, month later, saying, "See Mr. Reddie, this is what's happening," and I said, "Wait, wait, wait. Let's see the connection." And invariably, the systems would be connected. And so we could not eliminate, we had to reduce. So we had to go back and check. And that's optimization. Because what happens is if you just keep eliminating... Which is a good place to start... The system under study could get attacked by that interrelated, the other system which you have just actually disturbed. And the problem would resurface with a new face. And you would then say, "Wait a minute. We had solved this problem. Why is it back?" So here's where Profound Knowledge comes in. And that's why the word is continual, it's not continuous. You gotta keep at it, you gotta keep learning. So when he said, yeah, that for common causes, or what he called as random causes, they're so complicated... And for these special causes too, they become complicated... Then how do we understand, and what action do we take? Do we just wait on our haunches and do nothing? That's where he brought in the Theory of Knowledge. And I'll begin with his...   0:11:44.1 Andrew Stotz: And maybe I can add something.   0:11:46.3 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, sure. Now you could. Yeah.   0:11:48.7 Andrew Stotz: The first thing I was thinking about, a special cause, or an assignable cause in a factory, particularly in Asia... But maybe also in the US and maybe more in Europe these days... Is a fluctuation in the electricity. Not necessarily a blackout, but that can be a special cause.   0:12:12.1 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:12:13.6 Andrew Stotz: But just fluctuations in electricity, can cause an impact on a system, so it can be a special cause. And then once you understand it, you may decide, "Hmm, is there a way we can smooth this? Is there a way we can think about the electricity input into this system, which is really critical for this system, by putting something in between the electrical source and this particular system?" So that's an example of the idea of a special cause, potentially, that is just a common cause, possibly, of another system.   0:12:55.3 Balaji Reddie: That's right. In fact, in India, we did have this problem in the 1990s, when the whole world descended into India because of the cost advantage. The rupee got devalued, the dollar really sprung up. And so people found India as a gold mine, when it came to establishing organizations. And what they would do is bring in much of their semi-automatic technologies that they had in the US, or wherever, Europe at that time, into India, which were largely electronic, had components which were electronic. And in India, the temperature conditions are... I mean, you're in Thailand, you know how it is. It's extreme.   0:13:35.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:13:36.9 Balaji Reddie: And so it was not ready for that. And we would have these problems with the components conking off. We had to come out with some remedial stuff, some short-term stuff. And then we started discovering things, we started inventing things. And they almost started losing the cost advantage. Then they said, "Okay. Let's get a little smart." When the next set of machines etc., started coming to India... This was in '91-'92, if I remember right. By '93-'94, that realization came in and so they said, "Why don't we send it in with a cooler," the cooling system, "so that no matter what happens outside, the components would be unaffected." But that led to another problem in cities like Mumbai, where you had extensive humidity.   0:14:24.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:14:25.3 Balaji Reddie: And that would cause droplets, which would short-circuit the electronic components again. And so they came up with climatizers. It was crazy.   0:14:34.4 Andrew Stotz: Round and round you go.   0:14:36.7 Balaji Reddie: Yeah.   0:14:38.5 Andrew Stotz: That's interesting.   0:14:39.8 Balaji Reddie: You see, when I was exposed to Profound Knowledge for the first time, and when I wanted to teach it, I remember, I used to want to look out for examples; but I found none. And then when I started digging deeper and deeper, I said, "Wait, I do have examples. It's just that I didn't know that I was looking at it differently." And so it was amazing. Like I said, what Dr. Deming said, you see things that you normally would not see. And I began seeing things in retrospect.   0:15:09.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And that's sometimes... I think the teachings of Dr. Deming have made me a very calm and relaxed guy. I no longer freak out over, what I now know, is just normal variation. And I feel like it's a world of people, that you have to react. If you don't react, you're not doing something. And it's almost impossible for most people to see that the next outcome of this, is not a special cause. And I spend a lot of time in my ethics class trying to help young people understand, that there's just normal variation. Which brings me to my last point I wanted to make with what you said. It reminded me of my studies... Which are limited... Of insight meditation, concentration meditation, or Buddhist... What the Buddha taught. And I remember sitting in a temple in Los Angeles many, many years ago, and I thought, "I'm gonna try to learn from this monk."   0:16:24.6 Andrew Stotz: And I left there thinking... So we did meditation, and he said, "Just try to clear your mind. And just..." And so I left that meditation going home thinking, "My brain was on fire," and there's so many things going on. So I went to him, and I studied more, and I learned more. And I realized that I had misunderstood. You're not trying to control your thoughts, or reduce your thoughts. You're trying to observe your thoughts. And once I started to realize, just observe, then I started to make progress in really understanding that reduce will come over time; maybe, maybe not. But observing was really the step. Because once you observe something, particularly with your mind, if you observe thoughts coming out, then that actually means you're somewhat disconnected because it's hard to observe something that's happening. So therefore, you're starting to look at it from a different perspective. And that's what I thought about when you were saying, it's not just reduce, reduce, reduce. It's first, observe.   0:17:40.1 Balaji Reddie: That's right. Yes, understand, see what's happening, ask the right questions, "Does this happen every day? Or has it happened only today?" things like that. And then you could say, "Okay. If it's happened only today, why did it happen only today? Is today a special day?" So that's the understanding of variation in the broadest sense. And that's why statistical thinking is about asking the correct questions, even in the absence of data. It's thinking, statistical thinking. Don't confuse it with statistical methods, where all kinds of mathematical mumbo jumbo come in. This is thinking statistically. And that's where theory of knowledge, where Dr. Deming said, comes in to help us, first, enlist what's unknown. And then from that, you start pinpointing, or segregating what is knowable, faster. And then you... Once you do that, then you start recycling your thoughts and trying to understand those systems much better. And that's the theory of knowledge.   0:18:45.5 Balaji Reddie: Now, just a statement which he said, what is a theory of knowledge? He said, "A statement conveys knowledge, if it relates some cause to some effect; It fits without fail, all the observations of the past; It helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong." So I'll repeat the whole thing. He said, "A statement conveys knowledge, if it relates some cause to some effect," it provides us information, it relates some cause to some effect. "It fits without fail, all the observations of the past; It helps us predict the future, with the risk of being wrong." Now, if you go through this step by step, when you say here, take this example of a small five-year-old child. At least this is a very, very Asian and an Indian kind of an example, but I'm quite sure people all over the world will relate to this. A five-year-old child, here in India or in Asia, watching his father go to work every day. Father goes to work on, what we call as, a two-wheeler, a scooter as they call it. And if you know, in the old days, you could kickstart the scooter. We didn't have push-button starts, we used to kick the lever. And so this kid is very intrigued as to how does this scooter start. And he knows that he's at that age, if he keeps asking questions, he'll be told, "You'll learn when you grow up," or "Don't waste my time."   0:20:18.2 Balaji Reddie: And so he decides to observe and learn. And so he starts observing his father every morning from the small little balcony that they have. The daddy brought the scooter out into the compound and then put it on stand. And he did a big ritual around the scooter, and then he kicked the lever and the scooter started. And so he would write down. This is happening every day. And then he noticed that the scooter wouldn't start till he kicked the lever. And so he wrote down his first theory: kick is equal to start. Now, he decided to test this theory. A couple of days where he wasn't even in the balcony, he would sit inside the house and he would hear the kicking sound, and he would tell his mother, "Now the scooter's gonna start." And guess what? The scooter started. So this theory can't be wrong. Now, he decided to test the theory differently. He decided to start the scooter one day. So there was nobody at home, he goes to the garage where the scooter is there, and he gives the lever a mighty kick. But it doesn't start.   0:21:23.3 Balaji Reddie: Now, he says, "This is crazy." So he goes and reads the notes that he made. And then he saw a lot of funny things that were happening. His father was taking a bag off his shoulder, putting it on the handlebar, and touching the scooter two, three places and then kicking the lever. So he went and brought his father's bag, put it on his shoulder, took it off, put it on the handlebar, did that whole ritual, and then kicked the lever. But the scooter didn't start. He said, "Now, what's wrong? Maybe I've not observed properly." So the next day, the whole system came under scrutiny. But he didn't observe anything special at all. But then again the next day, and then he said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. There is something he's doing there. He takes the bag off his shoulder, but then he touches the neck of the scooter on the inside, and then he kicks the lever." So what could that be? And then when he observed the next day, he saw there was a key he was inserting and twisting it. And he said, "Oh, damn." So he wrote down his provisional theory: key plus kick is equal to start.   0:22:23.7 Balaji Reddie: And so again, he tests this when there's nobody at home. He gets the key, inserts it and turns it, then he kicks the lever and the scooter starts. So here's where his theory becomes a little more elaborate: key plus kick is start. Now, this works very well till, months down the line, he hears kicking, kicking, kicking, but the scooter's not starting. And so he comes out and looks at his father. His father's desperately kicking away. And he says, "Looks like the old man's got it wrong." So he comes down and asks his father, "Have you turned the key?" And he says, "Oh yeah. You're trying to teach your father how to start the scooter." "Then why isn't the scooter starting?" "I don't know." So they take it to an elderly gentleman staying nearby. "Look, the scooter's not starting." So that elderly gentleman is quite unperturbed. "Oh, no problem." He does something totally out of the playbook. He runs with the scooter, jerks it into motion, and the scooter starts.   0:23:20.4 Balaji Reddie: So key plus kick completely collapses, and this kid is flummoxed. He asks his father what made the scooter start, and that's where he gets the answer, "You'll learn when you grow up." Now, this kid grows up with the question in his head, "How did the scooter start that day?" And he reaches seventh grade where they're having a subject called science, general science. And the teacher that day in class is discussing Newton's laws of motion. And she starts, "Body continues to be in a state of rest..." etc., etc. "And to every action there's equal and opposite reaction," and, "rate of change of momentum is equal to force." And the moment that kid hears that sentence, "Rate of change of momentum is equal to force"...now here's the point I'm making. To every child sitting in that classroom, this was just information. But one of those things answered a question; it became knowledge. He suddenly realized when his teacher said, rate of change of momentum is equal to force, that's when he said, "When you're running with the scooter or kicking that lever, I'm generating a force which is making the scooter start."   0:24:32.2 Balaji Reddie: And soon, of course, when he grows up, he inherits the scooter, and every time he has a problem, he runs with it, jerks it into motion. But one day he's doing that and then the scooter is just not starting. So he takes it down to the motor mechanic, and the mechanic does something very funny. He goes underneath the scooter and comes out with a contraption called the spark plug and shows him how dirty it has become. Then cleans it, puts it back and then kicks the lever and the scooter starts. So now he's got a big elaborate theory. When I kick that lever or run with the scooter, I'm generating a force, the force ignites a spark, the spark ignites the fuel, and the scooter starts. Now, I know this is not how it happens, but I think I made my point.   0:25:13.9 Balaji Reddie: But if you go through this entire narration that I've just made, if you realize something, that every time this child was proven wrong, he learned something new. And he was proven wrong because he had a theory. It may not have been correct, but it was a theory. So theory is not the opposite of practice; theory is a guide to better practice. And the more your theory is proven wrong, the more you learn. And the theory is based on what you have seen, what you see before your eyes. You liken it to something, an experience, something you've seen, something you watched. And that's how theories are generated. And that's when Dr. Deming said, if you want to understand the complexities in a system, you begin with theory. "I think. I feel. Let's try this." It worked? Great, "Let's do it again." If it did not work? Great, "Let's see under what conditions it would work?" And that's why he said we need to cooperate to understand the system, because when we sit together, each one comes out with a different theory based on what our backgrounds are. I think once we had this discussion, like if I were to start describing to you the road reaching to my place, you already start constructing a mental picture based on whatever you've seen in life. And that's your theory.   0:26:50.3 Balaji Reddie: Now, when you actually land here, you say, "Oh, I thought this and I'm seeing this." So that's what happens with Plan-Do-Study-Act. We're all born with this. It's a natural way of learning. It begins with a theory: I think; I believe; Let's try. And then you actually carry out that set of steps which you think would give you the result. And then you study. "Did I get the result? Did I not get the result?" And then you act. "Maybe I need to modify my theory. Maybe I need to add to it. Maybe just abandon the theory."   0:27:23.6 Balaji Reddie: I remember once somebody asked me this question, "That if we abandon the theory, what happens?" Well, you get to know the limitations of your existing theory. And the more you know where your theory fails, the more powerful it becomes for you. If you can predict failure, you have really understood the process. So when you know that this is gonna fail, then you've really understood this. So this theory, this is a system of learning, and all of us are born with this. We all have this natural inclination of asking questions. So that system of learning which leads to theory, we're born with it. But the problem is this: there are some people who learn by watching, some people who learn by doing, some people who learn by reading, some people who learn by writing. For some people, one word is enough. For some people, you have to keep repeating the theory till the person says, "Okay. I understand it."   0:28:22.9 Balaji Reddie: Now, is this wrong? We're just different from each other. And that, is what Dr. Deming said, is the understanding of psychology. You need to understand the learning process of a person, and then you need to interact with that person. So whether it is an employee in your company, whether it's your customer, whether it's your supplier, you need to understand. And I would reduce that word to being empathetic. Understand, be empathetic, and not just understand what makes that person tick. Broadly, we say learning process. Now, a lot of corollaries that come out of this, that you cannot copy an example without understanding the underlying theory behind it. It's not how that person has been successful, but why. And for that, you need to... Because we come from so many different backgrounds, that's why Dr. Deming said, you need to have operational definitions before you start communicating to each other. So all of these are an outcome of the Theory of Knowledge. One is the concept of experimentation. That means the more you fail, actually, the more you learn. But management rewards only successes. The appraisal system works only on successes. We need to also recognize failures, because that's where you know where it failed and what you need to do next. And as they say, failures are the stepping stones to success, etc. Fine. But if you're doing it in a very structured scientific way, your rate of success would go faster.   0:30:05.1 Andrew Stotz: And I think that's an important part, is the structured way. Because one of the things... I was just teaching a management team, about 35 people, yesterday. And I was teaching them about corporate strategy, and that there's many ways to win in corporate strategy. Could be the low-cost leader, or whatever. But one of the ways I describe, is what I call, know-how. That your firm has some special knowledge, or some special skills, or expertise, that you've accumulated over time. And this brings us to the point of... Because many times, I've thought about the Theory of Knowledge, and thought, "Yeah, we do that." We casually do exactly what you said. We ask a question, we have a little theory, we test it. But the problem is, many companies think that they have know-how as a competitive advantage, until the person with the know-how leaves. And then they realize, "Oh, we just had one superstar." The question is, do we have a formal or structured way of acquiring and disseminating knowledge, till it becomes common knowledge in our company? And that's where the Theory of Knowledge, and the PDSA, I see brings a lot of value.   0:31:36.2 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So that's why the joke going around is know-how, know-what, but more important now is know-when and know-who. Even if you know who, it leads to the when, what, and how. Sometimes, you tend to thank the person profusely because that person says, "I know who knows to solve this," and then it takes you right there.   0:32:01.7 Andrew Stotz: Here's a fun thought exercise that I like to think of, is that... You and I both read physical books. And I've got thousands of them surrounding me in my office. But we're in a point in time where the future generations are not gonna read physical books. They're gonna read books that are online and...   0:32:27.0 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:32:29.0 Andrew Stotz: And then we look at someone's house in the future. There's not gonna be books in their house. It's gonna be on their pad, on their phone, in the cloud. Now, one thing that's kind of interesting is, think about... Imagine that there's a solar flare hits the earth and wipes out all the books. They're all gone. In fact, all of our accumulated knowledge, of research studies, and everything. For the first time in human history, there's like this moment where everything's gonna... It wouldn't happen nowadays because people still have a distributed libraries, distribution of the knowledge. And all of a sudden, you could be without knowledge. And so this is part of the reason why, in a company context, it's important to have a method for acquiring, but also a method for consolidating, and collecting, and building knowledge, and upgrading it. Anyways, that was just some fun thing that I've been thinking about in my head. So anyways, keep going.   0:33:35.7 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, no. That's what's going on right now with the HR departments in companies, knowledge management, because they say, like you said, the person leaves and everything leaves along with them. So apparently, what happens is, when they are debriefing after a successful project... And this implementation thing which I read in Dr. Juran, he used to call it the Santayana review, George Santayana, who made that famous statement, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." And so he would say at the end of the entire project, y'all sit together... And like from the defense, you have this thing called, debriefing. You narrate everything, and it's verbatim. You take down what you went through so that that remains on record. And so we used to do this in our company. At the end of the project, we used to have the last meeting, and the last document that we used to put on the file, which used to close the file, the improvement file, was "Things Gone Right, Things Gone Wrong."   0:34:37.7 Balaji Reddie: And without that, no project file was completed. No project was completed. We used to have that last meeting, and the new team coming in would ask for the recently completed projects, and begin with reading that document first, because we don't want to repeat the same mistakes. And this is the only way. So nowadays, I've seen this, that the HR person also sits around in that meeting and asks the question, "Okay. You took this decision, but what made you take that decision?" Because they want that to be replicated. Turning tacit into explicit. So that that comes from here. If you understand why Juran explained... That's why I keep saying this, that I could understand Juran because I read Deming; and I could implement Deming because I read Juran. They're not mutually exclusive. And so when people get into this stupid argument of who was better, you're losing out on their learning by getting into that silly argument. They were very compatible. Maybe, they had different ways of expressing themselves.   0:35:51.7 Balaji Reddie: And so coming back to what Deming said, he said that this is Theory of Knowledge, and so you are in a continual state of learning when you're dealing with, what you call as, random causes. But in a state of assignable causes, that's the low-hanging fruit. It gives you the instantaneous results that management wants to see. But at the same time, if you're exposed to Profound Knowledge, you know that if you take such drastic steps of elimination, etc., etc., to show those results, the low-hanging fruit, a person with Profound Knowledge would keep his eyes and ears open to note any kind of changes, anywhere, in either a related or an unrelated system. And then make changes accordingly. You can't just leave it at that.   0:36:44.4 Balaji Reddie: So my experience in my company when I started implementing this... Because we had... What? 77 different interconnected processes which were running to make the company... Well, from start to end. Which included some manufacturing, some finance, some personnel. So these are all interconnected. And we found that if you're making changes, they would affect the other processes, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. So you have to keep revisiting those processes again and again, and seeing how you can optimize. And my estimate, is that it takes around three, to three-and-a-half years to actually attain some kind of predictability in the entire organization, if you're using good teams and using Profound Knowledge. If you are not using Profound Knowledge, you will gain some very good... You'd have some very quick gains, no doubt about it. But then the other problems may resurface. And if you've seen the path of frustration that Dr. Deming has drawn in, 'Out of the Crisis,' there's a diagram that you reach... You expect improvement and you don't, and it stagnates. And that's exactly what happens when you don't have Profound Knowledge. You tend to stagnate, and in fact, you start going the opposite direction. If you see it as a better way of learning and understanding your processes, then definitely, things can get much, much better. That's how I look at it.   0:38:28.8 Andrew Stotz: Excellent. Right.   0:38:29.9 Balaji Reddie: So in my own company, it took three-and-a-half years, to see things. And then we saw the effect of all this when we had to grow as a company, and from having something like 30-40 people, to close to 300. The growth was crazy. But because we had been exposed to all this, things became easier, let me put it that way.   0:38:57.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. It's funny because what I was just thinking about... Normally, when we say, "You have to grow," we're talking about like growing revenue, growing market share. But what you're also talking about, is you have to grow in your knowledge.   0:39:11.0 Balaji Reddie: Yes. You have to.   0:39:13.7 Andrew Stotz: Otherwise you can't manage it.   0:39:17.4 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:39:20.7 Andrew Stotz: And anything else you want to add on this topic?   0:39:24.1 Balaji Reddie: Well, this is... So this is where you have all the four sciences acting together. So if I were to, in a nutshell, put together what we have just discussed of all the four sciences, I'll just pull up a list of points, and if we can sometime do perhaps a video call... Excuse me... Then... Just give me a minute.   0:39:55.5 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:39:56.5 Balaji Reddie: Okay. So here we are. So let's get to Profound Knowledge. Okay. So let's begin.   0:40:07.5 Balaji Reddie: So understanding... So appreciation for a system. The points you need to look at: that cause and effect are not closely related in time and space; that outputs are the results of a myriad of inputs; there exist synergistic relationships among the inputs themselves; And we need to understand the importance of a common aim and purpose for a system to function well. We come to understanding variation. That's learning how to think statistically, that is how to distinguish between matters that require immediate attention, what we call as, assignable cause variation; versus matters that require constant attention, which is what we call as, random cause or common cause variation., And understand that taking cognizance of and managing this variation, is synonymous to better quality. About Theory of Knowledge: the importance of theory; using theory to interpret observations; and experience is not doing the same thing again and again, but doing different things and learning from your failures. So you keep doing... Even if a person says, "I've got 30 years of experience," it could be... I don't say it's always... It could be the same thing being done for 30 years. But doing different things in 5 years, you could gain a lot more experience than doing the same thing for 30 years. And then you understand how to learn faster. The day you discover your learning process, is the greatest day of your life. And the funny thing is you can't discover it yourself. You need outside help. And that could be a mentor, maybe a teacher, maybe a friend, I don't know, it could be anybody. And understanding of psychology: okay, that people are inherently good; they want to do a good job; they learn differently, therefore they think differently. Working on people's learning systems and processes, rather than trying to exhort them, that would be better, learning their processes... And ranking... You cannot compare one person's learning system with another. Each one has their own learning system. You have to learn how to appreciate that and hone it, and make a person better at what they do.   0:42:40.2 Balaji Reddie: So these are the four sciences acting together. And that gives you Profound Knowledge. And we said here when we started, that when you have Profound Knowledge, you ask different questions. So when you start looking at things happening around you, and you start asking these questions... Because Dr. Deming said that people are the only living parts of any organization, and so you need to understand them. So I keep joking about this sometimes, that how do we learn this theory and psychology? The best thing is to... If you have a pet at home, if you can predict the behavior of your pet, then you really have Profound Knowledge. Because here is a living creature who can't communicate to you what they want, and if you can understand that, that's real empathy. When you understand your pet, or whatever.   0:43:43.5 Andrew Stotz: That's competitive advantage.   0:43:45.6 Balaji Reddie: Yes.   0:43:49.2 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic.   0:43:50.4 Balaji Reddie: Also, I keep saying this, when the womenfolk, they take a break when they are expecting. And then they come back to work after they've had their children, they had a child or something, people say that they've come back to work. I said, "Oh, they have not been away from work." They've done work which is so different right now. They've learned so much. So it's unfair to say that you've taken a break. I think women are never on a break. Whether they're in the family way, whatever, they are working. It's just that we define work as something that you do at a place of work, that is an office where they're doing work. Even when they're with a child trying to understand what that damn child is trying to say. I mean, just imagine, they learn how to... What that kid is going through, even though that kid can't communicate. And somehow, they have that instinct. So they have it more than us. I mean, of course, when you have parenting, which is done by both men and women now... During our time, of course, it was more women-oriented. We came from a different generation. But I see that change now. And so I keep saying this, that if you spend time trying to understand babies, or trying to understand your pets, I think you become more empathetic. And automatically, your Theory of Knowledge bit, and your psychology, starts getting stronger.   0:45:21.7 Andrew Stotz: Yes. I'm gonna test the theory. If I give my child this, they're gonna be quiet. Yeah. There you go, Theory of knowledge.   0:45:33.5 Balaji Reddie: There you go.   0:45:34.4 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic. Well Balaji, let's end it there. And on behalf of everyone listening, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNEXT to continue your journey. There's so much there now, it just keeps growing. So, this is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, I just can't stop saying it: "People are entitled to joy in work."

What does it really mean to build bridges that last for decades? I want you to meet Bircan Unver, whose lifelong commitment to responsibility, creativity, and global citizenship has shaped more than 25 years of meaningful work through Light Millennium. From growing up as the eldest of seven children in Turkey to creating an internationally recognized nonprofit connected with the United Nations, Bircan shares how art, public media, and open dialogue can bring people together across cultures. We explore why responsibility begins with each of us, how local communities can help solve global challenges, and why issues like water security, environmental stewardship, and human connection matter more than ever. I believe you'll enjoy hearing how one person's unstoppable mindset continues to inspire collaboration, education, and hope for a better future. Highlights: 06:55 - How growing up with responsibility shaped Bircan's lifelong commitment to serving others. 18:30 - Why public access television became the foundation for sharing voices and building community. 26:15 - The story behind founding Light Millennium and creating a nonprofit built on dialogue and education. 36:55 - How local communities can play a meaningful role in advancing United Nations goals. 49:45 - Why water security, cybersecurity, and gender equality are becoming deeply connected. 55:40 - Bircan reflects on preserving ideas through books, creativity, and lifelong learning. About the Guest: Bircan Ünver is the Founder-President of The Light Millennium, a Charitable Global Human Advancement Organization (LMGlobal.Org, 2001, New York); Executive Producer of the LMTV Programs; Multi-Media and Event Producer; Host, Author, Publisher, Public Speaker; [Head] NGO Representative of The Light Millennium to the United Nations Department of Global Communications since 2005 (formerly, UN.DPI); and Chair, Outreach and Partnerships Subcommittee at Global NGO Executive Committee and director for the 2021-2023 term. She has been also a Content Provider at QPTV since 1992, and she is the editor and co-founder of the U.S. Turkish Library & Museum Project. She has undertaken the Organization's e-publications, public programs since its inception in August 1999, and #LightMillenniumTV Series and Specials in all aspects of it since January 2000; along with, the LMGlobal.Org's all UN-related activity and programs since 2005. Bircan is the author and director of the Compulsory Peace & ICTs Education from Kindergarten to K-12, and Beyond Campaign, which she launched it through the Light Millennium Global in support of the Summit of the Future in 2024. The Campaign has delivered its 8th session along with the Coalition for the Campaign, which contains 22 organizations and educational institutions including The Light Millennium Global as the leading organization. Further,  she is also author of the bi-annual international high school project, “J.U.C. Media, Research, Writing & Innovation Awards”. The third of its kind was dedicated to the “Water Action Decade” and was delivered  (virtually) on the World Water Day, March 22, 2025. Bircan served as a mentor to the GPODS for three consecutive terms in Winter'22, Summer'22, and Fall'22 Fellowship Programs; and delivered lectures on “How to associate with the UN-NGO”, Public Access TVs in the U.S., and the latest one was on the #WaterActionDecade and the #2023UNWater Conference. To attach that, on behalf of LMGlobal.Org, she organized and hosted an Outside-UN Side Event ID #W175, titled, “What Is Your Commitment To The #WaterActionDecade? ~ Seven Core Ideas Toward #WaterAwareness, #WaterConscience and #GameChangers” in NYC on March 21, 2023, and was the head delegate of the LMGlobal.Org at the #UN2023WaterConference. Based on LMGlobal.Org's Commitments to the #WaterActionDecade, she launched #OneMinuteWaterActionCommitment during the #W175 Side Event, along with continues to work toward #WaterAwareness toward building up #WaterConscience.  She served as the chair of the ATAA Committee on UN Relations, guided its association to the UNDGC in 2020, and also served as the New York Regional Vice-President of ATAA (Assembly of Turkish American Associations) from October 2019 to January 2022. Furthermore, she served on several Planning Committees of the UN-Civil Society Conferences, and the Planning Committee of the High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace (HLF-CoP). She has been a strong advocate of the UN Vision, Programs & Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) along with the relevant UN Days, which are in line with the LMGlobal.Org's Mission/Purposes since its association with the UNDGC (formerly, UN.DPI/NGO) in December 2005. Currently, Bircan is on the Advisory Board of the Turkish Forum (based in Germany). She encourages and guides interested civil society organizations and members of academia toward their educational institutions' associations with the UN, along with engaging them with the UN Programs that are within her networks and beyond. Further, she is an Ambassador of Peace and Goodwill for Anuvrat (Anuvibha) Global Organization (Jaipur, India, since 2014); and a Member of the Global Movement for the Culture of Peace (GMCoP, since 2012). Bircan is also the founder and president of the IsikBinyili.Org Association based in Istanbul (2010), which is a sister organization and counterpart of the LMGlobal.Org. Author of the following four book titles in print (Turkish): “En Kutsalı Yaratmak” (The Most Sacred is to Create) (1995, 2022), “Sanatın Labirentlerinde” (The Labyrinths of Arts) (2016), and “Işık Yollarında (“The Ways of the Light”) (poetry, 2017), and “Bin Yıl Daha…” (2020, A Thousand Years More…). Also, she is the author of the concept and compilation of the “Hope Never Fades” (English) book (Istanbul, 2023). Bircan initially received her local and studio television production certificates at QPTV.Org in 1992. Based on this capacity, she produced and broadcasted near to 260 television programs through local channels in New York City, which are also available online through www.vimeo.com/channels/LightMillenniumTV including 36 #OneMinute #WaterAction PSAs. Bircan celebrated her 30th Anniversary at QPTV.Org through a video profile, titled, “A Turkish Experience in America” (Duration: ~9 min. Production Year: 2022). Her works through The Light Millennium Global is a recipient of various national (U.S.) and international awards and recognitions including two awards from the Foundation of Alliance Community 2023 Hometown Media Awards (F-ACM-HMA for her “GroundWater” Light Millennium TV program in Web-based Programming and Online Events / Independent Producer categories (received at Brick TV, New York), the Anuvrat Ahimsa Award For International Peace-2023 (received in Mumbai, India), and the 2023 International Volunteer President Award by Institution of Green Engineers (received in Chennai, India), and ashe is also the recipient of the 2024 Best Web-Based Program – Independent Producer for the #HopeNeverFades program by F-ACM-HMA, which was produced based on the 2023 J.U.C. Media, Research & Writing Awards (ACM HomeTown Media Awards, San Jose, CA). Bircan holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Degree from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Istanbul, 1988) and a Master's Degree (M.A.) from Media Studies of the New School University (New York City 1999). Ways to connect with Bircan**:** Websites: www.lmglobal.org  (active web site) | www.lightmillennium.org (serves as the organization's web archive)#LightMillenniumTV | www.vimeo.com/LMTV | www.vimeo.com/channels/LightMillenniumTV Social Media: Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bircan-ünver-7353207 X@lightmillennium Instagram@lightmillennium About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingston, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, hello everyone, and I want to welcome you to another edition of Unstoppable Mindset, and today we get to talk to a very interesting person with a with a lot of roots in Turkey, but she is also doing a lot of work with the United Nations here in the U.S. and other places. Her name is Birchan Umfer, and I hope I got that right. And Bircan Unver  01:23 thank you. Michael Hingson  01:24 Oh, good. And Berjan is is with us, and is going to talk about a number of things that she is working on. She's working on, and for years has been involved with a program called Light Millennium, and we'll we'll talk about all that, but let's just start and and as usual we'll have a great conversation. So, Bir John, I want to welcome you to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Bircan Unver  01:50 Thank you so much, Michael Hingston. It's great honor and privilege to have your guests. Especially, I love the title Unstoppable Minds. It's really inspiring and triggering the mind. Thank you. Michael Hingson  02:08 Well, my pleasure. We're glad that you have the time to to spend with us, and we will we will we will do it and make it work. Well, let's start. I love to start this way because I really want people to learn about you. Tell us kind of about the early Birchan growing up, and then we'll go from there. So tell us about Birchan and growing up, and and and all of that. Bircan Unver  02:32 Thank you. This will be a little bit different than most people know about me, my work. Well, we'll get to Michael Hingson  02:38 your work. Bircan Unver  02:40 Yeah, I know. I mean, the people who already know my work. What I'm gonna say now is completely too different from Berja. So I am a elder of seven siblings, and I was born in an ancient village in Mid Anatolia, actually nearby the Black Sea region, and I'm proud with my age, 1959, and my family moved to town first from the village, and then Istanbul for our educations for their kids, and but I don't know really as a girl child growing up with seven kids, as especially with a traditional family, being older girl is not a good idea. But but maybe it was a kind of tough childhood as a girl child. I I don't feel that I never been a child. That's really what I feel. But on the other hand, and that was you know when you are growing up, living through like I was a kind of second mom, and also our home was kind of everyone our guest from the village town and stay over not only one night, like or a week, like sometimes months, even years. You won't believe that, and it was not because either. So, but those kind of build up maybe my feeling to be responsible, so I consider myself a responsible person because I was responsible for my sisters, brothers, and also washing dishes, making helping my mom to prepare the meal, lunch, breakfast, and clean up. Like you know, I was kind of second person, second mom at home. So those early things, all those stolen my childhood, but at the same time, provide me being able to do everything from very early age. Even though I remember several times at the time. The bread wasn't, you know, you you weren't buying the bread from the market, but from the bakery, real where they were baking the bread. So she was, and time to time also she was making the the bread at home, and then she she wasn't sending me to school because then I had to stay with my brothers and kids so she can make the you know breads a big amount for a couple days. So that said, also gave my idea. I want to suddenly want to work as soon as you know I'm 17, 1617, So and then I started early working at a bank, and it was my first eight years. I worked at a bank in Istanbul. It is called Istanbul Bank, and then my graphic is like life graphic is a little bit different, like curvy, not like straight line. Then after eight years working at a bank, I started to university and fine arts, and then I had kind of interest art history, especially TV production, art history, arts in in the concept is producing art documentaries. That was kind of my vision. Also, it was also my reason initially coming to the U.S. learning TV production. Of course, English as first. So that was very much my childhood until you know 18 until starting at the bank, and then the rest is another story. I have, I must say, I would have three different life. Michael Hingson  06:48 Well, you had certainly an interesting childhood, needless to say, and I, I can understand what you're saying about being the oldest and all the challenges. I was not. I was the youngest, but we only had two siblings, and neither of us we were we were both males, and so we we did not do a lot in terms of preparing meals and all that sort of stuff. Except my brother and I were both in the Boy Scouts, and so when we went camping and other things like that, we learned how to cook on an open or an open fire and and things like that. But still, I understand that you you had a a lot that you had to do. What lessons did you learn by being the oldest child? What kinds of things do you think that you you carry over to what to your life today, because you were the oldest. Bircan Unver  07:44 I think two different components of that. One is also because it wasn't only I was the as a kid at the home and as a girl, girl, but also at the time there wasn't that kind of awareness which we have today. Which I mean, my mom got married with my dad at the age of 15, and she had birth. She had given me birth at the age of 16, the reason I'm bringing up this, when we were going to shopping Kapolechar, Grand Market of Istanbul, when I was 1516, and literally we were halfway age difference between my mom and myself. And when I was saying mom, and the people were surprised, and she and isn't your sister, other sister? They were asking me, and she was my mom. So, but this is in the long later years. I always become the best friend with my mom, and even my brother was saying, "Oh, now I understood that she, you are the joy of my mom because she can kind of a joke, and the others, my kids, like they are kids, but I'm her friend because they kind of feel similar. That is one, you know, lifetime developed feeling and strong connection, different connection with my mom, and the other also, as I mentioned at the beginning, it really this whole, you know, not selected, but where you, which house you born, which condition you grow up, that build up for me early high level responsibility. I feel responsible to do everything, and I, you know, that's a little bit tiring because that's what I want to say here. You say something in our after our initial Zoom meeting. It's really very inspiring. You say something. I just took note. We can solve all the worst problem. We can. You say you don't say we cannot. You say we can. Solve all the world's problems. So, like, it wasn't possible. It's not possible, but you know, as if I could solve the problems or I could carry everything. So it's kind of you know build up my bricks in my life. Michael Hingson  10:18 One of the things that you certainly, it sounds like you learned as you were growing up, though, was was all about responsibility and and and learning to take charge, but learning about responsibility and and feeling that it was okay to be responsible for others in your family and so on. And I think a lot of people don't necessarily learn a lot of lessons about responsibility, like they should. But you were put in a position where you had to do that, which is is certainly a good thing because you clearly have have done that in your life. Bircan Unver  10:54 That's very true, and also it goes with everything. Let's say sometimes some people think maybe unnecessary action when people cut trees, even in their you know backyard or front yard, whatever trees or any type of trees or fruit trees. I really get mad and upset because it is irresponsible to nature, to their own environment, just feeling they're responsible to trees, loving the trees, loving the you know, for instance, if when I was it was two weeks ago, I was working on at my desk, a bees was you know flying around me, and I don't like you know trying to hit and chase the bees, and I just left the window open, moved the room two hours, and it's gone. So I don't want to hurt things, even though if it bites, it would hurt me, right? So to kind of find a way, being responsible, because also I have a subconscious thinking that if I try to chase a herd, if an insect, any of them, they you know they react sharp. So I'm not a threat to them. So they are not threat to me. So I kind of make a subconscious connection, communication. Michael Hingson  12:22 Well, and it's it's better to to learn to love than than not. So I I hear what you're saying. Now you didn't go to college or university, right? Or you did? Bircan Unver  12:35 Of course, I did. That's what I was just briefly brought this stair at that level. That after eight years working at at Istanbul Bank, from literally actually 17 to 24 or 23 late 23 early 24 then I started at the Fine Arts University in Istanbul, and I mainly study both as major Turkish tradition arts and also along with as a minor. We didn't have a minor, but we had we didn't have the minor degree, but we had a selected course. So I was following up several like four years in a row and also whole year around, not a quarter semester base artist troy and contemporary art. So I started writing on art and exhibit and interviewing artists while I started study at the Fine Arts University, which is top university in Fine Arts in Istanbul, Myanmar, Sinan Fine Arts University. Michael Hingson  13:44 So you learned a lot about fine arts, and Bircan Unver  13:47 yeah, Michael Hingson  13:47 and you had obviously learned about finance from the bank, which Bircan Unver  13:51 is didn't learn that Michael Hingson  13:53 much, huh? Bircan Unver  13:53 Not at all, and I didn't like it. That's why I, you know, I changed all my life line. Michael Hingson  14:00 Right, but but you enjoyed art. Bircan Unver  14:03 Yes, and because also art always for me, and it as it is today. Whatever the life problems we cannot be resolved, art is always for me a branch to hold on and to kind of feel strength, connect with the nature, with the art culture, whom I never might met, or maybe you know through art, through music, through books. So it's kind of really, I think the the best human conscious and what we leave behind is what we produce. Creative might be a little bit another discussion. What is the term defined? And now everyone using like creative for everything, but creativity is like really what stays, you know, central. And something as what is already before, and what you brought it something new, that new perspective, like cubism and faism and expressionism and all that different genres or pop arts and another one Dali's movement. So all the Dadaism, so each of them brought something what is already existed, and then you know moved to different level, and also technology and communication brought where we are today. So and music, I'm not any degree. Degree train or understand, but I love music as most people about music and arts and literature and writing is always for me. Also taking pictures. I don't trust my memory much, but this is not new, not because of my age now. But I somewhat I always like take the pictures, whether I have cell phone, the oldest, you know, digital or the manual photo photographs. So even though when I run into where where was it, where I was, who was with, who next to me? I can't remember. But why I love that? Because really, it brings, it captures your life, even you don't remember, and then reconnect. Also, I I come up with a new concept. I haven't done anything yet, but it's kind of developing in my mind, that we can, we are able to capture the past, but we cannot capture the future, because you know whether you know unexpected the one photo comes up, or an audio recording, or all those movies, musics, and documentaries and paintings throughout artistry, you can really capture the past depending on what you know your background or interest and education, but you cannot capture the future. But you can imagine, we can imagine the future. We can invest into the future. Michael Hingson  17:16 Well, and and the the reality is that that the future is based on so many things that happen in the past, and so you can learn to to use some of that information and and have a better idea of what the future might be like, and that's that's pretty fascinating too. So so, how long did you go to college Bircan Unver  17:42 in in Turkey the basic four university education is annual base, not semester base. It's a four years, and actually when I started it was five years. Then later on they the system education board changed it to like four years plus two years. So I graduated from a four years fine arts, and then I have a master's degree based in New York News School University. Michael Hingson  18:20 Ah, in New York. Bircan Unver  18:21 Yeah. Michael Hingson  18:22 Okay. So that was was that two years. Bircan Unver  18:27 Yes, but it was a little bit different again. Yeah. See, because first when I was here for the first time, 18 919, 89 to 1994, I started and I took to six credits and I love it. But I had to go back to Istanbul, so then I got the you know absence live of absence, and then but coming back three years later, I readmitted, and then I finish it. I got my graduate diploma in 1999 May 1999 Michael Hingson  19:12 Okay, so Bircan Unver  19:14 you've been dealing late. You've been Michael Hingson  19:17 dealing with school for a while, but but while all that was going on, you got interested in, and you started to to do things regarding public access television. And you started that, if I read your biography correctly, in in 1991, you started doing things with public public access TV. Tell us a little bit about that, and why did you do that? Bircan Unver  19:41 That's really the kind of key point in my life. In as for the initial one of the two reasons that I came to the U.S. as the first time, I was you know the first aim to learn English. The second also. To learn the TV production, and then my first year was in the U.S. was in L.A. and then I was looking for the schools and just I'm I I'd like to get the formal education, formal training, and then one of my friends there, whom I met there, she said my aunt is TV producer at Queens Public TV in New York, and she is looking for someone like you who really wants to get in and all that. And then I think a couple months later, I had a very brief trip to New York, and I met with her, and then I met with her at QPTV. Now she is unfortunately not with us, but she was also she was the first Turkish producer at QPTV, and I'm forever grateful in memory of her. She was the one who introduced me QPTV, so I met Victor at QPTV in 1990, and then when I went back to LA, I decided to move to New York. So as soon as I moved to New York and I registered to QPTV's both field production and studio, and at the time, there were seven, eight months waiting list. Eventually, I got it on the list, 1991, and first I got the field production certificate, and it was I think six months something, and we had a group project and solo project, and then studio and studio production. It's when the same group project after you are learning all the equipment and then shooting and everyone is crewing everyone is helping each other within the same group of the class and then also producing group project and then the individual project that it is the similar step for the field production and the studio, that also provides a certificate to enabling us to use QPTV equipment, studios taking out the equipment, inviting studios, studios. Unfortunately, after COVID 19, there has been a long dragging issue. They haven't opened the studios. This is I don't want to get in because it is beyond our concept, but because that was my initial reason also moving to New York. And then once I started producing program and airing, I really loved idea from one idea, just idea, and then put paper and develop it. Bring yes, bring the crew, especially with the manual three-inch tapes, and to present, put everything in a tape, and then submit it an ARC schedule. I really love that. So then, while I was there, and then I said, "Okay, I want to really have a master's degree on TV production. So my master's degree from New Zealand University is in media studies. So and I got my diploma May 1999 So, but New Zealand was amazing. I learned all the first my you know my life although it was 39 maybe 3839 years old when I was Photoshop and Premiere or Evid and all the first offline digital all the software program I learned at the new school and I edited my first program offline at the new circle as well, but when I got diploma, and then I had nowhere no access to continue. Also, you know, it's just I, I never been about the person. My mind and my heart wealthy, but not financial terms. And then, so QPT was always my second home because it provides me continuing the producing and provides me access, provides me equipment. It's like provides the community. That's what it is exists for, especially in support of the Article First Amendment and freedom of expression, and also QPTV format is really, really not well known, or not QPTV loaned. It is public access, pack programming, public education and government programming, non-commercial. So it's it is not much known widely, but it is really one of the best symbol of democracy. And now it's kind of a little bit diminishing because also widespreading out other web streaming platforms like this or other, so that there are so many. Discussion and issues, and also there is one petition to the New York Senate that is called Team New York that could also bring in all the web streaming to this community media access public access media. So then, Michael Hingson  25:19 oh, go ahead. Bircan Unver  25:20 No, I mean the question is so QPTV had has been the longest since 1991. I've been providing content, and as long as I am in the US, if I'm out of the country, even if I am out of the country, my previously submitted programs are rerunning in different, you know, whenever they schedule for my new programs, I determine which time slot because I have a time slot to be scheduled, and whether 28 minutes or one hour. But especially again after COVID 19, I couldn't produce anything at the studio at QPTV, but like this Zoom-based programs, and then for the late million organization, the programs I produce and then edit them, reformat them to schedule for QPTV. But it wasn't as it used to be produced at QPTV, at the studio with the crew, that's the excitement teaming up. It's really, I love it. But Zoom, this type also make more maybe manageable, but also bring more intonation speakers. You know, through online connection. If Speaker 1  26:54 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  27:28 So you you started in public access television and and and are still doing that essentially. But in 2000 you started Light Millennium TV. Tell us about Light Millennium Television. Bircan Unver  27:42 Thank you so much. Because Late Millennium, I still consider it's my third child because already 25th anniversary. The flyer on my back says 25th That also refers the 25th anniversary of the Light Millennium. I think a the experience and production, and also providing three platform QPTV, Queens Public TV, but actually the 1992 Communication Act and PAC programming, public government public education and government programming; those emerge with my new school education, like Fatrus, Plato, the concept of the two ways of messaging, and for the first time in my life, at the age of I think it was I was 39 I was able 3039, I was able to use. It was very new, also for the war. Internet. We had the internet at the new school as our media class, the open forum. One week media theory class. We have open discussion forum about Greek philosophy, further is communication, media theory. The other class we had the classic format. So all these together merged in my mind, and I really felt I found my medium. That medium is the internet, which me, especially someone is living in New York, who has you know 30 years first life in Turkey, Istanbul, that culture, and then I I didn't want to kind of disconnect from my root cultures, and internet provided me that connections, and also I always like to write and communicate, so so it becomes like natural medium. And then when I just graduated in May 1999 I send out by then like 40 people with my friends. Colleagues, and then I said, "Oh, I want to start a platform. This platform is going to be ours. And everyone wants to say, kind of to expand the QPTV's concept, because when I say QPTV's concept, this is the again First Amendment, and they don't control the content. They don't say anything you can do, you cannot unless it is a threat to someone's life. So it's all the content, or you are responsible as the producer. So I really love that freedom and responsibility again. And then then I was mentoring at the New York Food Moon Finance and Television, and I was kind of trying to find what I want to do, and I was already producing programs at QPTV. I never give up as as long as I could afford to produce the time and edit. Edit is always more time consuming, and then the executive director of the at the time 1999 Woman Film Man Television, she said you can form a nonprofit. I never taught it before, and I'm forever thankful to her. And then I said I don't know what to do where to start because she perhaps she saw the potential because I was producing non-commercial and publishing, trying to promote, you know, through group emails, and whatever the you know social media available at the time. Well, mostly email and group emails, and then she suggested me a volunteer lawyers of arts that she said they can help you, and I never knew and I never thought I if I never came to U.S. maybe I will never had a concept of forming a nonprofit or light minimum. So that U.S. and all combination brought me and news called Queens Public TV, First Amendment, United Nations Article of 19 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everything together kind of merged in my mind. Also, the projects I produce, I communicate, is contact with people, I learn from them. So then, when I contacted with them, they ask me, you know, what is my statement this type? And then I drafted all of them, and they put in medical, you know, terms and terminology, and I was lucky that we got a pro bono at the time one of the you know major U.S. law firms. I I think I can say now because they even though I think merged K Shuler, but they took our case and they formed my organization on on a pro bono basis and officially the first as a non profit organization done with the 500 1c T V together. So we officially formed 2001 July 17, and we and then right after that they filed 501c3 for us, and then we granted that in September 18, 2002. Bircan Unver  33:14 My memory is not good, but I I remember that date as of today because it was kind of imprinted in my mind, but also the beauty was that the granted granting 501 c3 was effective of the formation date, which is July 17 2001 So then, since I developed started the light minimum concept, introducing speaking people trying creating an open platform that everyone can you know contribute be part of it, so then I started in January 2000 on January 13 2000 started first monthly the like TV series at like at QP TV. That's how it came about. Michael Hingson  34:02 Yeah, you have certainly created quite a niche in in the whole light millennium and all the other things that you've done, which is pretty fascinating. How did you get connected with the United Nations? Because I know you're doing work with them. Bircan Unver  34:18 Thank you. Actually, the concept with the UN use, I don't do work for them. Michael Hingson  34:29 Right. Bircan Unver  34:29 We do work with them. Right. You're connected Michael Hingson  34:34 with them. You're not working for them. I understand that. Bircan Unver  34:36 Yeah, I just you know one word, but it's key key differences. But as as I mentioned, how the light millennium concept emerged, and also my master's degree program, media studies at the New School, and also there is another person I have to mention here, also in. Separate for her respectful and loving memory, Danielle Camille. She was my advisor for my thesis project advisor at the new school, and all that TV ideas and my thesis project. And she loved, and I got all A. And my first TV ideas project was peace, reality, or utopian dream, and it was 11 minutes or so. It was just before the first Clinton administration election, just October, I think 2002 and then I interviewed many academicians, civil society, non-profits who whose focus area on peace and war and you know against nuclear or all that and and then that actually the concept peace reality or utopian dream that took me to the United Nations I don't know now as a as an outsider, at the time it was so welcoming, and I went to photo department. They share me with photos, and I got all the books I was looking for. Of course, public library. I got all the books about the peace and peace organization. So that 12 minutes program, peace rate or utopian dream, and physically led me to step in the UN for the first time, and then producing this project, searching kind of open to me new horizon, and also my advisor was persistent. Birjan, we know you are great. You produce fundamental programs on arts, but I want you to do something else. So that actually also forced me to move beyond producing something beyond arts. And so then then peace, reality, or utopian dream concept came in, but also it wasn't far topic in my life because my son was born 20 when I was 2022 Now he is 45 His name is Borush, and mean is in Turkish peace. Peace also at the time, you know, Africa hunger, and I was hoping when I get 4050, this will be over. It's not the case, but as a vision, I always look for humanistic positive for the humanity, not you know for myself well-being. Michael Hingson  37:38 Well, you you kind of act as a bridge between UN programs and local communities. Tell me more about that because you view that you view yourself as being a bridge between UN programs and the local community. Why do you why do you view yourself as more of a bridge? Bircan Unver  38:00 That's very nice metaphor, and I think it's very true for me too. Maybe I could take it two three step backs. One is the village I was born. There is a river, and and then there was a bridge, and that bridge was kind of fundamental. Really, going to where you know people are established, living in all the agriculture and large fields, and it was kind of nostalgic to me. It's a bridge, but it's a stone, short bridge. That's the the first part. The second Istanbul. You know, my life main path when I was in Istanbul, Turkey in Istanbul, and Istanbul the Bosphor and then the Istanbul Bridge. Now the name changed, and now three bridges, and not just the bridge itself, but also Turkish geographic Turkey's geographical space place on Earth and especially on in between Europe and Asia and Black Sea and then the Mediterranean Sea and then when you go down North Africa, and then you go up like Russia and North Europe. So you see that that connection physically, geographically, and troy physical bridges. We live, we grow up with this kind of as part of our DNA and vision. When I was working on this, the first the initial need you know in the non-profit world to describe the need need was to connect with my culture, people, friends, family, the internet medium, and then village is also metaphor, and when we associated with the. I let I'm proud to say it. Let the association process. That was also my vision from that small video for the class project. And then, then I realize this is also. I think today is real fact that local communities, even Queens here, people are paying 1000s of dollars to come to New York to get visas. All that trying to get the sponsor, you know, to attend a conference, and I I didn't see much interest within the local nonprofits there, and that little bit was shocking realization for me. So I brought to my programs UN visions programs, MDGs, UN days, sustainable development goals. For instance, when it was announced at the UN for the 2023 agenda, we created dreams for humanity. So we brought people from lots of life, poets, authors, and youths to really share their ideas for humanity, for peace. Michael Hingson  41:12 Well, you-it sounds like, from all that I've read and and studied, you're you're, or at some point, you kind of have moved more into dealing with a lot of things with the environment. So I know that your program has been able to get a credit accredited as an observer observer status with the UN Environment Program. How is how has that affected what you do and all of your work going forward. Bircan Unver  41:43 Thank you. This is also another important, I think, milestone for us. The first in connection with the UN, associated with the in the formerly United Nations Department of Public Information, and then it has changed to Department of Global Communications. Officially, we've been associated since 2005, active and good standing, and we are able to be presented at the UN with six representatives, and therefore we are able also to reflect back to our committee's networks from the UN and it's two ways. I really like the concept two ways messaging, and then always environment in somewhat it involves in our programs. But let's say through water, through energy, through, for instance, when the forest fires really burns my heart. So being sensible and trying to, as much as I could, to attend the meetings, especially MDGs for the first phase of the Millennium Declaration, really, it's. I consider UN is the best school I ever had, and it's for me lifetimes to call, and I learn about so many countries I will never otherwise know them much. Some of the names you hardly hear in media and anywhere else, so it's kind of opens and to see the global spectrum. Also, one of the things I really love at the UN, whether you you are a ambassador or president or prime minister of a country that has maybe a population 1 million or 2 million or 1 billion or two 1.6 billion, the largest one, so you have the same minutes of speaking time, same voting, especially of course, I'm talking about the general assembly. So those things I follow up, and we try to incorporate time to time. And water issue always, I wanted to involve. I want to do something about, but it's just not like because I love the tourists, and I'm not, you know, scientist, so I'm not officially trained. So also, I'm not able to protect the, you know, fires in the forest. And every year it's getting worse and worse. And then I'm sensible, but you know, you can't do much about it. And eventually, although our last name is same, but we are not blood connected. Professor Oljoymer, at the time he was vice president for the UN Water at the UN, and we connected. And I was following up, and I was aware his work before we met. We connected through the UN. So then, especially during the COVID era, then when I've seen his speeches, natural-based solutions, and then his piece on smart water, so I propose him if we can do something. About water, and then he was very supportive, very kind, very modest. We had our first water program on the World Water Day in March 2001 and then it has turned out an annual program, and we kind of made the global connections and collaborations, and especially first three, four of them, Professor Olja led and guide, and also we worked together in a sense that I brought one part of the speakers and he brought other parts. So it was also great, diverse speakers and also the level of the speakers from whether civil society, academia, UN, and youth, all that. So we already presented six of them, and 2023 we were part of the UN Water Conference. We presented a program, and then last year we participated and presented a program site event in Nice on the Ocean Conference, and we kind of we also had previously on the ocean again. So plastic also become whether ocean, whether water, whether land life, like plastic, is becoming a huge in every level. Not plastic, but also chemical, all all sorts of polluters on in environment. So then we become promoting, producing, and there are really great level of academicians and experts, and they also like to share and connect their research and their findings. So it's a platform to break down together, and then when it is a video, when it is posted as both a summary along with the full presentation or speech, so it becomes a really source where you know you can find diverse voices, diverse solutions, diverse ideas, and also we align them in support of the UN days, UN conferences, SDGs, sustainable development goals like Water Days. Also, we collaborate with an organization in India, IGEN Green Institution, Green Engineers Institute of Green Engineers. So they are focusing on energy SDG seven. So we contribute them, bringing speakers. Bircan Unver  47:40 So then they join us to our program. So really, it's an organic volunteer base. So that that actually, I was so proud that we got a call, invitation to submit the application for this accredited status, and it was June 2025 after the ocean conference. I think ocean conference kind of brought them cumulatively and maybe brought their attention. And then October they asked our official documents, the bylaws and and certificate of organization, which is the regular require any formal application at the UN, and then I I submitted them in I think it was October 1525 but I haven't heard anything, and then I thought maybe you know they didn't consider, and then literally a year later, in June, last June, we got approval, and with a, it's not just accredited for a special one particular conference. It is an observer status assembly to contribute draft ideas. I mean, to contribute drafts, draft resolution to observe, to participate, and then also to be responsible to provide every four-year quadrennial report. Let's say if we fail to produce contribution at any level to this cause, then you know we may lose that observed status, but of course we'll do our best to contribute and to continue. Michael Hingson  49:27 With all of the work that you've done in all of this, I want to come back to World Water Day in a moment. But with all the work that you've done and all the the the things that you've done in public television and so on, when you host these meetings or you participate in these meetings, do they get televised? Also, are you able to bring those to to the public through public television? Bircan Unver  49:53 When it is Zoom, then I edit within my time slot within the limits of. Time slots and QPTV provides two different time slots. One is 20-eight minutes, the other one is 50-eight minutes. So then, let's say if it's two-hour session, I you know a little bit edit and then title, etc. and part one, part two, and also depending on the length of the session or 20-eight minutes. So then I schedule them through the local channels, as we spoke at QPTV. Also, I make them available through our vmail.com/lmtv channel on web on the web. Also, when we have a summary or outcomes, so we also provide those links and share through social media. Try our best to make those information available, visible, and reachable. Michael Hingson  50:51 Well, that I'm glad you do that. I'm glad that it gets to be something that is a lot more publicized than you just attending a meeting-that's important, I would think, to do when when you talk about World Water Day and so on. One of the things that that I I understand you do is you compare water security directly with cybersecurity and gender equality. Those are three different sorts of things when you include water security. Tell us more about that. Bircan Unver  51:24 This was our latest program in last March, and we had in our prior program on AI a discussion on AI a public discussion on AI policy or AI arc. So he's a professor and at the SUNY, and he's a mathematician, and he's also teaching cybersecurity. And when I was talking about when we met about the water conference upcoming, actually in this December, in the United Emirates on I think December six to eight. Even I was thinking to attend, but I wanted part a bit this time virtually instead of going there. So when we were talking about and and I really like this idea and I say as I asked exactly what you asked for, and then his really statement explanation made great sense because everything is nowadays control troy some form of electronic or AI or a combination of those systems, right? Competing systems. So if or if there is a technical issues, that's one case. But if there is a hack, especially water is the life source for everyone, whether you are billion or trillion, or you are you know ordinary people on the you know everyday life. So water is the source for everything, including producing the energy. AI. So water is the life itself. So then, when he said, if any hacking, whether you know small you know some you know people with a bad intention or some maybe big corporation because some profit purpose they want to sell more you know bottled water whatever or some international security issues you you may name this many other things. So if a computer system, if the control mechanism, if the AI system, whatever that combination in that system, is hack, then everything is a huge risk, and that's number one. How it connects with the water. Also now you know we smart how everything is electronic. Everything and then when that somewhat the life collapses there. So including water, including energy. So everything is so much you know interconnected. And then how that the gender equality came. Also, we follow Michael the UN annual-based dedication team for each UN Day or conferences. For instance, last year, water and gender equality, because water and gender required is also so inseparable concept and conditions in many parts of the world, and then also our professor Emre Tokus, he also. Make beautiful connection that if woman or when woman, if and when women are more in the security, cyber security, IT technology sectors, they are more sensitive. They are more like maybe natural in their dealings, like mother protection. So more protective, so there is less risk than where it is now. So to increase the gender equality, both not burden on the woman, you know, where it's the water scarcity that woman has to carry the burden. Girls, even five, seven years old, when developing countries, when it comes to developing countries, and then if the girls are, and also that was staggering. Stats he gave sort of shocked me today because he is a professor at SUNY. So what I mean by that, he said one of his class has only four girls out of 31. of his class has only one girl. One of his class doesn't have no girl. So even though if if girls are girls are not getting in this field, how we gonna bring the gender balance in all cross-cutting sectors of society. So that's how both from the UN perspective, the dedication team, also cybersecurity, the profile from a university that girls are not showing attention, interest studying cybersecurity. That was the fact based on his class last semester. One Michael Hingson  56:46 of the things that you have done, as I understand, is you've written several books. Bircan Unver  56:53 Yes, there are more, but hopefully I could get work on them, publish them as well. The my first book was Michael, based on my interviews with artists and my reviews on art exhibits, and also when I had questionnaire surveys like with artists, galleries, academicians, professors, students. When I before my first life prior prior the U.S. So when I went back after four years and I was really eager to get in a job for as a TV producer and somewhat that didn't work despite all my efforts even I my project load and everyone was after me, but they want to take the project, but not give me the role what I deserve for. So then I kind of close myself, and then I said I want to compile my books, my articles, my interviews. So that was how my first book came about in Turkish. To create is the most sacred. So, like the value to give the highest value for the creativity, intellectual production. That is through all those interviews, reviews, and questions. So that's that was the first book. The second book is in a way a bridge again between U.S. and Istanbul, New York and Istanbul, or maybe L.A. New York and Istanbul. Because when I came in, also I've done freelance journalism, so I wrote some you know reviews and the magazine. I used to, you know, send and appear my interviews and reviews. So and it was include not too frequent, but it was include some of major exhibits, both from LA and also from the Metropolitan Museum in MoMA in New York. Also Turkish artists here. So I met them, you know, when I was living. I started living in here. So then I a combination of those, and also that was another metaphor developed in my mind when I was Istanbul. I was feeling like the labyrinths of arts. So that's my second book title in Turkish labyrinths in arts. So like you are like this kind of narrow and small world in Istanbul art worlds and very high competition, and then nobody expanding to New York and LA expansion means bringing some, for instance, Franz Bacon, Thomas Hart Benton, and Max Ernst and Marina Magritte. Those also the last part connecting with the New York Istanbul from my art based on my art background. Michael Hingson  59:51 So, were any of the books published in English? The Bircan Unver  59:54 last 120, 23 is English, but. It is a compilation concept is written me. I directed the project, and of course I have some pieces also beside the concept. But it is a compilation by 24 contributors. It is based on the JUC Media Research Writing Awards 2021 and 2023 High School Awards Project, and also it is also engaging the youth to involve the UN programs at an early age and encourage them award them. So that also the next one is going to be on the Water Action Decatur in the same line, same concept, and also I have a book project since 2022 I couldn't still 2022 2020 actually. I dream, therefore I am. I have 80% of the book manuscript is ready, but I couldn't finalize it, and so the other one also I was hoping but couldn't to have a book for the 25th anniversary of the latentium. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. It's a little bit seemingly not going to happen this year to come up 25th anniversary of late millennium, but I had 20 anniversary of the late millennium in Turkish, and so this is completely different issue because I introduced like Millennium both in Turkish and in English, so it's like Tiffany Sister is the Turkish one, and then I formed Turkish sister in 2010, and then so on the 20th anniversary of the Turkish organization, as it is association, official association. So I compile the first part, the concept vision, very much like Millennium, because it's the system. But the second part based on the programs, activities, and challenges in Istanbul. So this book also in English will be first the the manifesto and the first all the history will be very much in English, the original one. But the second part is going to be completely, you know, selected ideas and projects and programs from the website and public programs from the last 20-five years, and it's hard hard things to do. It it's very challenging. I couldn't do it. Michael Hingson  1:02:47 It's it's a lot of work. Well, Berjan, I I want to tell you that we have now been talking for more than an hour. Time flies when you're having fun. Man, I'm going to go. I'm going to have to go ahead and and end our time, but we'll have to do this again and and continue the discussion. But I really appreciate you taking the time to be here, and I hope that people will monitor your programs and and and read your books if they can read Turkish or English, whichever works. Troy Bircan Unver  1:03:18 has so many English pieces, and now everyone welcome to look out our website. And what's the Michael Hingson  1:03:26 website again? Bircan Unver  1:03:28 lmglobal.org. Michael Hingson  1:03:32 lmglobal.org. Okay. Bircan Unver  1:03:34 Yes, but the whole archive from 2019 to 2000 no, 2019 no. of course not 2019 1999 to 2018 The archive. Our initial website is light millennium.org Millennium is with double N double N. So the everything we are talking about, all the process, our UN programs, and the reports from the UN NGO briefings, some conferences we participated. If anyone has any question, I'll be happy to provide the link and you know to contact them. Michael Hingson  1:04:17 And we will put that information in the show notes, the notes for the podcast. So I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely informative. I really appreciate your time, and I hope the programs continue to go well. So I want to thank you again for being here, and this has just been a lot of fun. Bircan Unver  1:04:39 Thank you so much, Michael Kingston, it is great honor and privilege. Especially, you are a hero, and your your story is amazing, and you are also taking really one of the challenges works like producing these programs, and we never met in real life. And then this is also like Millennium and your work. How we connected through? Otherwise, there was no like regular environment or database environment that we could meet. Your work and your dedication and your inspiring contribution really connected us and bring us together in this session. Thank you, and I'm really grateful for that. Michael Hingson  1:05:29 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset

Is the Indian corporate growth engine lacking a critical execution strategy? In this deep, unfiltered conversation on the Gaurav Arora Podcast, we sit down with global corporate leader and author Satish Rao to uncover the hidden realities of scaling from humble beginnings to navigating elite multinational boardrooms.From growing up in a classic Mumbai chawl environment with limited access to modern resources, to executing high-stakes international turnarounds in Shanghai, Satish breaks down the profound differences between the global execution mindset and typical Indian corporate structures. We dive into the harsh truths of office dynamics, why leaders often struggle to simplify complex communications for their teams, and why standard MBA degrees fail to prepare young professionals for real-world business challenges.Whether you are an aspiring executive trying to climb the corporate ladder, an observer tracking global business representation, or navigating generational gaps within your current team, this episode provides an intentional blueprint on corporate integrity and professional strategy.Timestamps for the Conversation:00:00 Chawl to CEO Teaser01:26 Childhood in a Chawl03:29 First Corporate Shock05:40 CEO by 45 Promise07:06 Delearn to Grow10:05 Dreaming Big from Bottom12:25 New Orbit Same Roots15:09 Office Dynamics Not Politics18:01 China Assignment Hard Lessons19:17 Leading in Shanghai20:14 Ego Off Learn Fast21:27 Trust and True Success22:59 China Execution Mindset24:44 From Labor to Tech26:25 Understanding Gen Z28:05 Writing for Gen Z30:42 Myth of MBA Jargon33:19 Mirror Test Integrity36:01 CEO Stretch and Sync37:28 Advice to Younger Self38:17 Closing ReflectionsAbout the Guest:Satish Rao is an experienced global corporate strategist, speaker, and the author of "Can I Fly? Giving Wings to Your Dreams". Throughout his career, he has driven monumental organizational transitions, focusing on operational clarity, cultural agility, and authentic leadership models.Join the Community:► Subscribe for weekly leadership breakdowns and high-growth deep dives.► Drop a comment below: Which business ecosystem do you think needs a complete leadership overhaul next?Subscribe for weekly leadership breakdowns, and comment below on which industry you think needs better representation next.

"The more I work in this field, the more there is to learn — and there's multiple strategies that you have to implement." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and Feline Infectious Disease Summit 2026. Pallavi Kamath grew up fostering kittens in Mumbai, studied animal science at UC Davis, earned a master's in animal public policy, and returned home to lead The Feline Foundation — an NGO she describes as the first in Maharashtra to systematically address the needs of community cats. With an estimated one million cats on Mumbai's streets and no existing population data to work from, the Foundation built its entire approach around a Logical Framework Matrix: a structured problem tree that mapped every welfare challenge and converted each into a program goal, giving the organization three focused pillars — population management, healthcare, and community involvement. On the ground, that means zone-by-zone sterilization across Andheri West, Mumbai's largest suburb. The Foundation divides the area into zones, conducts exhaustive street-by-street cat censuses, organizes local feeders into "carer collectives," and sets monthly TNR targets before returning to repeat the census. Once a zone hits 80% sterilized, it moves into maintenance mode — with community members taking the lead. Six of their 12 zones have crossed that threshold. Pallavi and Stacy also dig into the logistical realities most programs never face: nearly zero access to commercial traps, a handful of expert cat catchers who learned entirely on the job, and a city so geographically dense that sterilizing one neighborhood means immediately contending with cats flowing in from the next. The conversation closes on scalability — how a cat cafe can seed community buy-in, why Mumbai's municipal government is a rare progressive funding partner, and what it would take to open additional centers across a city that still has nowhere near enough sterilization resources. Press Play Now For: How a Logical Framework Matrix turns a problem tree into an organizational blueprint The zone-by-zone census methodology: every street, every building, every shopkeeper — before TNR begins What a "carer collective" is and why organizing local feeders before you start trapping changes everything The 80% threshold: how the Foundation defines population stability and transitions to maintenance mode The reality of trap access in India — and how a visit from an international colleague transformed the team's efficiency Why Mumbai's dog sterilization history may have contributed to a massive cat population explosion How a cat cafe can function as an adoption engine and community awareness hub Why Mumbai's municipal government is one of the few in India providing grants for cat sterilization — and why it's still not enough Resources & Links The Feline Foundation The Feline Foundation on Instagram The Feline Foundation on Facebook The Feline Foundation on YouTube The Feline Foundation on LinkedIn CCC TNR Certification Workshops

In a satsang in Mumbai in 2004, Sadhguru answered seekers' profound questions on topics ranging from likes and dislikes, ego, identity, and personality to sadhana, karma, joy, and bliss. He also offered simple methods through which one can transcend the fundamental bondages within oneself and hasten the journey towards the ultimate. Conscious Planet: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.consciousplanet.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sadhguru App (Download): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://onelink.to/sadhguru__app⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Official Sadhguru Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://isha.sadhguru.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sadhguru Exclusive: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://isha.sadhguru.org/in/en/sadhguru-exclusive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Inner Engineering Link: isha.co/ieo-podcast Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices