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We take our upbringing for granted and it was only with the benefit of hindsight I realised how lucky I was. Growing up in pluralistic India taught me the value of tolerance and the appreciation of accepting differences.
I arrived in London after my undergraduate degree in the 80’s with a firm sense of my own identity and a belief that the world is an accepting inclusive place. It was only through sharing stories that I began to realise that I truly had an accepting, liberal, non-judgemental, secular upbringing. There was very little in my backpack that was influencing me unconsciously. I was very fortuitous.
We are defined by our narrative, our personal story, our experiences. These have an impact on how we make judgements and form opinions. A lot of time that’s just fine but every once in a while, we make snap conclusions that have a negative outcome either for the other person or ourselves. Just one particular experience can lead to a lifelong belief.
Knowledge is power, and I firmly believe through learning and reflecting we can effect positive change.
Since starting my own company Tharoor Associates in 2009, I have had the privilege of hearing some wonderful stories from different parts of the world. These stories were all shared in the context of understanding our Unconscious Bias. As I heard them, I realised that other than some obvious cultural differences, we all have very similar experiences. I wanted to share these stories with a wider audience, so I decided to have podcasts on the unconscious bias.
I have had the huge privilege of talking to a wide range of people around the world from California to New Zealand to Bombay with London in the middle. They share their stories and how those experiences have impacted on their unconscious biases. They tell us, the listener, what they learned from those experiences.
To begin a real process of change, we have to look at our own Unconscious Bias and move away from these potentially damaging patterns of behaviour. Assumptions are internal; we carry them around like a backpack on our back. Before any change can be made in any relationship, we need to look into our backpacks.
I do hope that these stories will resonate with you and will help you the listener reflect and look into your backpack. Happy Listening.
Season 8
“And hence, I am giving you a compliment that in spite of your grey hair, you look amazing. That you must have looked so much better when you were younger. And that’s another unconscious bias that we automatically assume that youth is prettier. And I have to agree that youth is beautiful anyway, but to think that you looked better then is what I’m getting to…”
Seema Anand is a mythologist, a storyteller with a focus on women’s narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature of ancient India.
Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. This was the first text to give women a platform of equality. It was a brave book that tried to change the position of women in society.
Her seminal work ‘The Arts of Seduction’, is a commentary on the metaphors and lost narratives of the Kama Sutra is an effort to reclaim the book for its intended purpose.
“So, when you get embedded in a network, what happens is your freedom to think wider than what the interests of the network represents is compromised. What happens is that your faithfulness to a tradition becomes unfortunately, unfaithfulness to your own personal integrity. Because there are very many questions with which you’re struggling in your life. And no system in the world, no religious institution or structure in the world can accommodate those questions, much less answer them.”
Professor Valson Thampu is a former teacher and academic administrator in higher education, as well as a theologian and freelance contributor to the national print media. He was a member of the Delhi Minorities Commission (2000-2004) and the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (2004-2007). He was nominated twice to the National Integration Council (2004-2014) under the category, ‘distinguished citizens of India’. He now lives in retirement in Kerala, South India, actively addressing issues pertaining to religious reform. His recent book titled Beyond Religion: Imaging a New Humanity is the manifesto of his reformist agenda.
“And I started to analyse where these tics were coming from, you know, tics in Italian – and I can’t speak Italian. So I spoke to one of the guys who I work with, and he said, is it possible that when I was young, everything that I’ve heard all the words that I’ve absorbed, actually remain inside my head? I never forget them, but maybe lost the ability to recall them. But everything is there as a memory and Tourette Syndrome, the vocal tics, has an ability to access those in a rapid sort of speed.”
Paul Stevenson is a lived experience ambassador at Genius Within and a public speaker. Genius Within is a social enterprise established in the UK to help neurodivergent people unlock their talents, whilst acknowledging and celebrating that this diversity forms part of the rich tapestry of human experience.
They advise governments on policy and provide consultancy to businesses, driving systemic change that allows all employees to thrive. They provide in-work support in the form of coaching, training and assessments. They also support neurodiverse/neurodivergent thinkers who are not in the workplace, who might be studying, unemployed or in the criminal justice system.
As Paul says of himself “I have Tourette Syndrome- it doesn’t have me! I’m not broken and don’t need fixing.”
See https://geniuswithin.org/what-is-neurodiversity/ for further information on Genius Within.
“And so our heroes as youth were not doctors and lawyers, or engineers, or politicians. They were quite literally like mobsters, and mafia types. Because those were individuals in our neighbourhood who had any kind of social standing influence and access to capital. They also knew how to make money, and they often provided opportunities, both financially and socially, for everyone in the neighbourhood. And so those are my early heroes. And often how they’re portrayed in the media, you know the common conception, as he’s kind of like ruthless, cold hearted. Lacking a moral compass kind of characters, who just have it on neighbourhoods and manipulate people and destroy society.”
Jodi Anderson Jr. is the CEO and Co-founder of Rézme, an EdTech platform that facilitates economic and social mobility through specialized recruiting, professional development, and personalized learning for justice-impacted citizens. After serving ten years in juvenile and adult prisons, Jodi earned his BA in Political Science and an MA in Education from Stanford University.
His non-profit PipeDreamers helps to coordinate diversion programming in the Bay Area while bringing coding and design courses to youth incarcerated in juvenile facilities across Northern California. As an alumnus of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program, he continues to be an advocate for criminal justice reform and access to higher education.
“I just had a lot of questions about the culture of noise we live in. And I was a bit fed up with people just constantly having opinions which to me was something jarring. The way people were jumping on the bandwagons to offer their opinion on absolutely everything and it’s all black and white. I felt like all this noise, you almost can’t hear yourself think, which is why the idea of silence came about.”
Ayisha Malik is author of the Sofia Khan novels, This Green and Pleasant Land and The Movement. She was winner of the Diversity Book Awards 2020, and teaches creative writing for the academies, Faber and Curtis Brown. Ayisha lives in London.
“I have always loved my faith, and I have wanted to fully embrace who I am. So wearing a headscarf, praying, being Muslim is just, it’s literally a core part of who I am and I want to be able to write about anything I want to with passion, authenticity & honesty. I also want to be able to communicate with people, I don’t want to create a barrier between me and anybody else. Even though my physical appearance might create certain barriers, but I work really hard to remove them.”
Remona Aly is a journalist and broadcaster in the UK with a passion for faith, lifestyle and identity. She writes for The Guardian, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought and has been a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Something Understood,a half hour programme which explores a theme across different faiths and traditions through music, prose and poetry. She is also a podcast host for various platforms.
Remona is Director of Communications for Exploring Islam Foundation which specialises in PR campaigns and creative resources to better understand Islam. For example, one of her campaigns highlighted untold stories of solidarity between Muslims and Jews, with a focus on the Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews from the Nazis in World War II.
Remona is the former Deputy Editor of emel, a vibrant and glossy British Muslim lifestyle magazine which was the first of its kind to launch nationwide in the UK.
“My dream was to become a teacher and I would play ‘school’ every single day. And I could go places in my mind. I was in foster care and I was not having the best situation with my life. I began to dream and I would play school every day and it would take me away from foster care. It would take me away from the abuse. It would take me away from the neglect. It would take me away from the feelings of wishing that I was dead and so playing school was my safe place. And so I realised that I could go anywhere if I just dream.”
Anthony Swann became the first sitting teacher ever to be appointed to the State Board of Education by the Governor of Virginia, USA in 2021. Anthony has been in education for 16 years as a classroom teacher and instructional coach. He has had the privilege of teaching every elementary grade except kindergarten. Anthony is currently the assistant principal of Monterey Elementary in Roanoke, VA. In 2018, Anthony began a program entitled “Guys with Ties” to teach boys the importance of honesty, integrity, and character inside and outside of the classroom.
In 2021, Anthony was elected by his peers to be the Teacher of the Year in two different schools. If those accolades were not enough, Anthony then became the 2021 Virginia State Teacher of the Year.
“I have a very strong centre. And it was destabilised by Oxford [University], but it wasn’t destroyed. And that kind of self-belief has saved me. I don’t think I’m better than anybody else, or I’m a superwoman or any of that. But I do know that I can do some of the stuff I do and I’m good at it. And that the bastards will not beat me, that really drives me.”
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was exiled from her birthplace, Uganda, in 1972. Yasmin is a journalist, broadcaster, author and part time professor of journalism. She writes for the I newspaper and Sunday Times magazine and has written for the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications She has won several awards including the Orwell prize for political writing and in 2017, National Press Awards columnist of the year prize. She was specially commended for this award again in 2018. She is a national and international public speaker, a consultant on diversity and inclusion and trustee of various arts organisations. She is also the co-founder of the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Their new report ‘The Inner Lives of Troubled Young Muslims’ was published in November 2020. Her recent books include Refusing the Veil, Exotic England about England’s infatuation with the east, In Defence of Political Correctness and Ladies Who Punch. She has twice been voted the 10th most influential Asian in Britain. She has eight Honours degrees and sits on the boards of arts organisations. She is also a keen cook and theatre buff.
“I think affinity bias is the one where I feel that is the key. The deal breaker is that if you can meet someone, and you can see something in them, that reflect you. Be it a principle, a belief, a way that you would like to be seen. I think that’s the one that draws you in. Some people are very naturally charismatic, which means it’s not learned. It’s not trained. But I also think there’s an element of how does that charisma impact and affect us in different ways?”
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator.
Anthony is the winner of the 2023 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize for his most recent poetry collection “Heritage Aesthetics” published by Granta.
The chair of judges, journalist Samira Ahmed, said Anthony’s poetry “is beautiful, but does not sugar coat. The arsenic of historical imperial arrogance permeates the Britain he explores in his writing. And the joy of this collection comes from his strength, knowledge, maturity, but also from deeply felt love.”
His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts.
His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year.
In 2022 he founded Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press.
This is what one reviewer says of Anthony and his work ‘One of the most politically engaged poets of our time, Anthony holds the busy intersectionality of history, politics and ideology in poems that remain fresh and open.
Season 7
“We all have an unconsious bias, where we’re walking down the road, and I could see somebody and I will just presume their life, or wonder what they do, or how many kids they have. I will just be inquisitive like that, because it’s in my nature, I think, as a barber.”
Content warning: This episode deals with themes of sexual exploitation and death.
Laura is a competitive powerlifter, mother of four and grandmother of two. She lives in Dublin, Ireland. Laura Kavanagh is the co-host of the ‘Talk of the Town’ podcast that features “3 Dublin girls addressing different issues of daily life”. It can be found on Instagram at @talkofthetown_podcast_, as well as her personal handle @Thismammy.
Laura has many stories to share.
“And so, throughout my teen years into college, and even into adulthood, my entire drive was about just proving them wrong, or trying to shake in a very improper way and very useless way the weight that was in my backpack. Rather than dealing with it and addressing the self-limiting beliefs head on and addressing that unconscious bias head on, I carried it around with me. And that’s the thing, it became such a weight on me because I refused to deal really with the hurt and the pain that went with all those things.”
Carlos Hidalgo is a Life Design coach, a Corporate Culture Development Consultant, two-time author, TEDx speaker and international keynote speaker.
Over the span of the last 25 years, Carlos has held corporate roles, started his own entrepreneurial ventures, led his company to receive multiple Inc. 5000 awards and has served in non-profit organisations. Carlos is now dedicated to helping others design a life they love to live, through his Life Design coaching and Corporate Culture services.
Carlos’s last book, The UnAmerican Dream details his journey from a workaholic to a life that he loves.
You can follow Carlos on Twitter @cahidalgo or on Instagram @life_design_living
“The things that we lost are not the important things in life. The important things in life, first of all, is the love that you have seen in your home. That’s one, number two, is the integrity that you have seen in your home, and the integrity that you have seen in your mother, the integrity that you have seen in me, the integrity that we have taught you over the years to you and your siblings, that matters.
What also is important is the truth and the ability to speak the truth, always speak the truth, even when the words that you speak, will come back to harm you. You speak the truth.”
Carlos Hidalgo has more than four decades of executive management expertise and development of strategic programs for Fortune 500, mid-market companies and non-profits.
With an extensive knowledge of Latin America, Carlos has developed programs for Logoi (publishing), the Government Tourist Office of Mexico, and for bus builders in Mexico and Brazil.
He also has widespread experience of the non-profit sector having served as the Chief Operating Officer of Word of Life, an international non-profit organization. In that capacity, he directed long range and day-to-day operations in 81 countries around the world.
Carlos was appointed Commissioner on the Michigan State Commission on Spanish Speaking affairs by Michigan Governor John Engler and served one term.
Carlos presently serves as a member of the governing board of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.
“We live in a in a post-colonial society. So for example, every time I come back to the country, there are a series of signs that come to the surface of my skin, in almost a hurtful way. And that is in that every person that I see, for example, in advertising or TV, is aspirational. And they look very European, and usually they’re kind of light skin, and their features have nothing or almost nothing to do with 90% of the population in the country. And I find that shocking, that it is still very accepted.”
Monica Alcazar-Duarte is a Mexican-British multi-disciplinary visual artist, whose work acknowledges her indigenous heritage while exploring current ideals of progress. Her work references Western society’s obsession with speed, expansion, and resource accumulation as an index of advancement, at a time in which ecological disaster looms. It considers other ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world.
She embraces themes related to science and technology and their influence over society and the natural world. In her projects she mixes images and new technologies, such as Augmented Reality, to create multi-layered work, producing meaning through seemingly disconnected narratives. Monica’s work has been exhibited and collected throughout Europe, Mexico and the United States.
“It means feeling so othered that you clearly stick out in a certain context. That might be the way you look, your race. In my case, it was being black at university. But in that same context, even though I was so visible – and it was so clear that I was present and there because I stuck out – I was also so hyper-invisible because I was in the minority. My voice was felt so insignificant, and I felt so unimportant and I felt so undervalued in that same context. So it was a weird feeling to navigate, to feel visible and invisible at the exact same time.”
Vanessa Maria is a DJ, Broadcaster at Foundation FM, and a host at Resident Advisor.
Named as one of the most important young people in music, Vanessa has made her mark on radio stations across the country sharing her love for underground UK music. She’s been busy making appearances at Boiler room, Dazed Magazine, Warehouse Project and HÖR in Berlin.
Vanessa’s work in and around mental health has also not gone unnoticed.
As the key presenter at Resident Advisor, she currently hosts a music and mental health-related podcast and documentary series. She has been named as a leader in shaping the future of London’s nightlife by The Face Magazine.
“And herein lies the rub. I mean, once you get used to [technology], you absolutely cannot do without them. And then you wonder how you managed before. They are absolutely beautiful but what they also do is they take possession of your soul. Even the very fact of writing a novel on a computer. I think I must be the last person on Earth, well, maybe I’m not – I write with a pencil in an exercise book. Why? Because it seems to be more expendable. When you write on the computer, there’s an air of finality about it. And I don’t want that, because at that first draft stage, it’s a slippery fish that can go in any direction.”
Ashok Ferrey is the author of five books, all of them nominated either for Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize or its State Literary Award. He read pure mathematics at Oxford and was a builder in London before becoming a writer. Ashok Ferrey’s new book, The Unmarriageable Man just won the Gratiaen Prize – Sri Lanka’s premier literary prize founded by Michael Ondaatje.
In a parallel world Ashok is an architect whose last building, The Cricket Club Cafe, was nominated for a Geoffrey Bawa Award for Excellence in Architecture. By day Ashok is also a personal trainer.
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“Diversity comes in many forms and one of those forms is not having everybody going down the same funnel. Doing their GCSEs, doing their A-Levels, doing a degree going and doing internships during their holidays. Going on the milk rounds and choosing a bank to work in. You know, it’s all very narrow, isn’t it? Actually if somebody’s been a professional musician for a number of years, they’ve had all sorts of adversity to overcome and. And having different life experiences really adds to a team and to a business.”
Nicola Horlick is a British investment fund manager nicknamed ‘superwoman’ in the media for balancing her high-flying finance career with bringing up six children. She graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a degree in Jurisprudence, later joining SG Warburg as a graduate trainee in 1983.
She was initially placed in the asset management division of Mercury Asset Management, where she stayed for the following 8 years, becoming a director at the age of 28. In 1991, she moved to Morgan Grenfell Asset Management and in 1992 was made Managing Director of the UK investment division.
In 1997, Nicola was asked to set up a UK investment business for SocGen, a French bank, with the aim of accumulating £5bn of funds under management over the following 5 years. In 2013, she founded Money&Co, a peer-to-peer lending platform where she remains as CEO today.
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“And I remember when I was working with Cat Stevens, and he found Islam. And he tried to convert me to Islam. And then he said, Chris, you’re still searching, and until you find that, you’re not going to be settled. And I agreed with it. But he couldn’t persuade me to lead my whole life and take on this new life. So I had to have an encounter with God that was personal and real, which I did have, and that’s what turned me around.”
Christos Demetriou is an entrepreneur, music producer, songwriter and pastor.
Chris’ commercial history embraces multiple areas of business activity, including a sports promotion and public relations company, a television broadcast network (with affiliates in 28 countries), an entertainment exchange portal, a media rights and brokerage business (still active after 32 years) and a registered charity (celebrating 32 years).
Chris is also the author of four books and hosted “It’s All Greek to Me,” a TV programme which is aired in 36 countries.
Chris is responsible for three top 5 chart hits and two number 1 songs. One of Chris’s compositions featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games and appears in Q magazine’s Top 100 Singles of All Time (at number 77). Guinness Book of Records cited the original version as being the first ‘sample’ ever used in a music production.
Having worked in different capacities with many well-known celebrities, Chris is professionally linked to world renown music artists such as Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Mike d’Abo and John Kongos.
In 1990 Chris and his wife Loraine founded Cornerstone Ministries, a registered charity and Evangelical Christian church based in Surrey. Cornerstone Ministries started as a small Bible Study that grew rapidly to a congregation now exceeding 600 people. Cornerstone is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community made up of 41 nations.
Here is a link to the song he mentions in this interview: He’s Gonna Step on You Again
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“Historically, epilepsy was believed to be caused by demons. So that automatically put anybody who had a seizure, or a fit, as in the evil camp. Now we sort of know that it’s caused by an electrical imbalance in the brain. But still, it’s a disease that’s stigmatised and looked down upon. I remember when I was diagnosed, the doctor could not have done a worse job of telling me. He almost couldn’t look me in the eye. He avoided any deep conversation about it and I was in and out of the office in just a few minutes, and then saw him treating an old lady with so much tenderness and care. I wondered what was wrong with me and, of course, it was epilepsy.”
Richard Thomas and his wife Susanna have led Hillside Church in Wimbledon for 27 years, where he is the pastor. Richard also serves as chaplain to The Priory Hospital, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Cancer Centre London. He is passionate about how we respond spiritually in our darkest hours.
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“It was small things, it was kind of telling me that I wasn’t good at something, or even teachers telling you that you could have tried harder, or you should have done better at that. And you kind of build up, and I built up, these just small things, bit, by bit, by bit, that led me to a stage of thinking. Well, I’m just no good at anything. And I’m just not confident and everything fills me with fear.”
Jo Uff is a Confidence Coach based in England for women who want to lead a more fulfilling life, but feel that something is holding them back from being, doing, and having more of what they want.
Jo supports them to reignite their interest in life, move forward, and achieve the changes they want to make. She works with them to define their future with intention, overcome the personal blocks holding them back, and take actions towards achieving what they now want in their personal or professional life.
“People would constantly ask me where I’m from, or like what my education background was. And for me, that was them asking me his questions to almost belittle me. Until that day that I met you, and you asked me, what if they just want to know where you’re from and what your background is, just out of curiosity? I had never thought of it like that. And it was such a liberating experience for me because I had created this bondage for myself. And I was living in it, believing that I will never be taken seriously because I’m not a man and I’m not of a certain age. So all of these stereotypes that I have of people buried deeply in my mind, they do impact the way that I treat people and the way I think. As unintentional as they are, I definitely don’t believe that they’re harmless. So this, for me, is unconscious bias.”
Octoli Tuccu is a Learning & Development expert with over a decade of experience. Octoli is originally from Nagaland in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, in the northeast of India. She has lived in five countries including the USA, Qatar, Thailand, China and India. Octoli has trained over a thousand professionals globally on various leadership development subjects.
Season 6
“So, I think the first thing we must realise that there is no end-game here. It’s not like 10 years, practice this and in 10 years you’re going to be relieved of all unconscious biases, thats never going to happen. First to understand that, that’s a perpetual operation within our, our mind, it’s going to always be there. So I think what it requires is, I mean, you know, kind of acute awareness of it, I mean, can we be aware of it?”
Thodur Madabusi Krishna or T.M. as he prefers to be known is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, writer, activist and author. As a vocalist, he has made many innovations in both the style and substance of his concerts and is known for his individuality. His concert stage, whether in his hometown of Chennai or anywhere else in the world, is wholly classical but his concert practice is uncompromisingly his own.
In the year 2016 he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for “his forceful commitment as an artist and advocate to art’s power to heal India’s deep social divisions, breaking barriers of caste and class to unleash what music has to offer not just for some but for all” In 2017 he received the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration Award for his services in promoting and preserving national integration in the country. In 2017, he has also received the Professor V Aravindakshan Memorial Award for connecting Carnatic music with the common man.
T.M. speaks and writes about a wide range of issues, not confined to the cultural sphere. His interests span the breadth of left-wing activism, be it the environment, the caste system, social reform, religious reform, combating communalism, innovation in classical music and more. He has started and is involved in many organisations whose work is spread across the spectrum of music and culture. Recently, he has spoken out against the destruction of statues of Lenin, Ambedkar, Gandhi and Periyar
In collaboration with Ashoka University, T.M. Krishna is now involved in The Edict Project, an attempt to reimagine Ashoka’s edicts in musical form. The project aims at creating vibrant aesthetic, socio-political and academic conversations around the edicts.
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“I recently read how it’s only .01 percent of our DNA that’s responsible for the expression of our skin colour and our traits, all of which are our outward appearance that we define as race. But those things are the things that we use to define each other. We are biased when we look at a person, when we are talking specifically about race“
Marguerite is an American writer and editor with a background in literature, translation, and magazine publishing.
Marguerite currently has a book out titled The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, which you can locate at here website linked below.
Focusing on world cultures, she aims to understand the nuances that separate us, with the resolve to further our understanding of each other through her work.
Marguerite has spent many years living in different environments that are & foreign to her – Holland, Chile, France, and now lives in Sri Lanka.
She is currently editing memoirs by Iranian, Kuwaiti-American, Bangladeshi, and Ugandan-American authors, and gathering writings for an artist book about birth traditions around the globe.
Marguerite recently curated a collection of diverse stories by authors from many Muslim worlds, entitled The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, which was published by Penguin in December 2019.
She says her mission is to try to promote cultural awareness by supporting the voices of those heard less often than her, specifically through literature.
Marguerite’s website – https://www.margueriterichards.com/
Marguerite’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/margueriterichards/?hl=en
Marguerite’s YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9ESu76fwhqn9_NRndQ2Eg
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“So here’s the question, the unconscious bias is not that, that you got a tendency to go for the, smaller dog in the fight. The question is whether you do it to glorify and validate yourself. In which case, you know, there’s no real pure energy involved in that. As some selfless Jesus like figure, who is willing to give his life to save humanity, because that’s what he wants to do.”
Cyrus Broacha is an Indian TV anchor, theatre personality, comedian, political satirist, columnist, podcaster and author.
He is also a prankster, best known for his show Bakra on MTV and his show The Week That Wasn’t on CNN News18.
He is also the host of #CyrusSays on IVMPodcasts which is one of the best podcasts of the country.
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“When I first heard the term unconscious biases, it actually had a negative connotation to me, as the word bias often does. But after some thought, I realised that unconscious biases are actually very natural. What separates us as humans is our ability to learn from our experiences, both good and bad. Now, like emotions, we have positive ones and negative ones, the problematic ones are the bad ones, like for example, anger. How do we deal with that negative emotion, we have to acknowledge it, we have to manage it.”
Sonia Dandona Hirdaramani had a career in finance, fashion and entertainment before pivoting to personal investing and non-profit work after her move from New York to Sri Lanka.
When she was working in entertainment and fashion, she was commended by Hillary Clinton for building bridges between South Asia and the USA
She currently lives in Sri Lanka with her husband and two young sons.
An occasional writer, Sonia writes a column, Island Life, Global Views, in the Daily Mirror, the English newspaper with the highest circulation in the country.
She also wrote a chapter for Anupam Kher’s best-selling book, “Your Best Day Is Today.” She is a graduate of Columbia University and completed a Harvard University Graduate Proseminar in Journalism.
Check out Sonia’s work here: https://linktr.ee/soniahird
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“And we have centuries worth of information at our hands and we really don’t find time to do the sort of work we should, as individuals, to make this world a more thoughtfully choreographed place rather than one where we have existing inequalities and the powerful manage to control media and the way we think. I think we have it all in our power to actually be more informed.”
Simone, a Bangladeshi-Brit, is an economist and photographer and grew up in North London in the 1970s.
Aged 5, Simone along with her family escaped from persecution during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war and moved to London.
She grew up in a fairly politicised family, her parents influenced by the left politics of the 1960s, and their activism grew with the movement to liberate Bangladesh.
She herself married a South African involved in SA’s liberation and has spent much of her working life working in the consensus building space with different stakeholders on economic policy, gender rights, climate and worker safety.
After the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh and the tragic death of over 1000 workers, Simone has been working with safety for workers in the global supply chains with some of the largest global brands and local industry.
She chaired BRAC UK for ten years, was on its global board and is now on the founding governance body of BRAC which is the world’s largest development NGO.
BRAC is ranked number 1 in the Top 100 NGOs for the last five years running – with scaled impact on health, education, livelihoods, gender rights and a trailblazer in eradicating extreme poverty.
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This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book credit!
“Feeling a heightened sense of my family being in peril really made me realise that a lot of what people were doing and saying and reacting to was based on a couple of things. One, a lack of experience with the groups or the cohorts that they were rallying against. And the second, being their only exposure to those people or concepts was through media, which is common through so many people’s lives. If you don’t have access to a specific culture or group or cohort, the little bit that you do becomes the whole, the totality of your perception of that group.”
Damion Taylor has spent the last 15 years applying data and technology to entertainment. Both analytical and creative, he brings a unique skill set that’s in high demand for brands and media companies.
However, being Black in media and technology, Damion has experienced first-hand the impact of pervasive unconscious biases.
Damion has now begun the journey of helping to bring those biases to light for himself and for others. He hosts a podcast : Professional Confessions.
Where to find Damion’s Podcast – https://shows.acast.com/Professional-Confession
The Professional Confessions Website – https://professionalconfession.com/
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This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book token!
“I don’t have to become British, I don’t have to become Japanese and I don’t have to put on a front or a mask in order to just exist. This is the centre in my body that gives me the validation that I need. That it’s fine to just be exactly who I am. And that changes day to day as well, there’s a fluidity to it.”
Kate Kinoshita is a writer, movement artist and mentor based in West Yorkshire.
She is of Japanese and white British descent and graduated from Oxford University in Chinese Studies.
Her chronic health conditions led her to explore ch’i-based movement practices in Taiwan, and to living and working in rural Japan.
She is interested in non-dual animist frameworks and the impact of colonialism upon the collective and individual soma.
Kate runs regular online group classes exploring meditative movement.
~ you can find details via her Instagram @_oakshine.
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Trigger warning to listeners. This episode deals with stories around abortion and racism that could be distressing to some listeners.
“Here’s an unconscious bias and a cognitive phenomenon.The human brain likes simple causality.So if a case got in front of a jury, the experience from talking to lots of people, including on long flights from one part of the country to another is that, if it comes out of your vagina, it must be your fault. The ability to think in any complexity about pregnancy doesn’t really seem to exist.”
Lynn Paltrow is an attorney and the founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a non-profit advocacy organization. NAPW works to ensure that no one is denied civil or human rights because of pregnancy or any outcome of pregnancy including birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.
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“There is a basic core principle of the work that I have done all these decades. It is the principle that nobody should be punished simply for what we put into our bodies. There is no legitimate basis in science, in medicine and ethics, the Bible, you name it, for distinguishing between or discriminating against people, based upon which substance they put in their body.”
Described by the American magazine Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.
He founded and directed first, The Lindesmith Center and then the Drug Policy Alliance from 1994 to 2017, during which time he and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana and advance other alternatives to the war on drugs.
Ethan currently hosts the leading podcast on all things drugs: PSYCHOACTIVE.
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“Forgiveness is quite different. First of all, we do it for ourselves. So, I had to get rid of the bias that I am doing it for somebody else. I am doing it for myself. I don’t want to be carrying around this anger inside me. It’s like a form of taking poison when we are angry with anybody. For a long time. I am not talking about just in the moment – for a long, long time. We keep telling ourselves a story about what they did and we are engaging in victim consciousness.”
This is part 2 of my podcast interview with Robin Shohet. Robin is a therapist, supervisor, trainer and author of the book he co-wrote with his wife:In Love with Supervision. Creating Transformative Conversations.
In the last episode, we discussed the idea of what unconscious bias meant to him. What is individual consciousness and how does this affect all the decisions we make? This interview can be found in Season 4, episode 3.
This time, Robin will share some stories of a more personal nature. His understanding of the word forgiveness and how that may affect his unconscious bias.
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“And then when my turn was there, I go to the stage, I realised that I couldn’t utter a single word. I was completely, like, nervous, and I couldn’t. I was stammering as you know, I was stammering , I was spitting. A lot of struggle was there. So the words were not coming out of my mouth. And everyone was simply – they were laughing. And when I saw some teachers, they were hiding their faces, but I could see them giggling as well. I was trembling, but I finished my speech, I didn’t give up. In that moment, that very moment, I decided that I’m going to become a leader.”
Puneet Singh Singhal was born and brought up in a slum called Sangam Vihar in South Delhi,India.
He grew up facing domestic violence and poverty. Due to his stammer, he also faced a lot of bullying.
Despite these early years, Puneet went on to complete his undergraduate degree in English Honours from the University of Delhi.
He then worked in the Royal Bank of Scotland as an operations Analyst in the Anti-Money Laundering Department.
After a year of working there, he realised that corporate life is not for him. He has since worked with organisations like Amnesty International, Action Aid India, Vision India Foundation and Association for democratic reforms.
He is a former member of the Delhi Minority Commission and a current member of International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
He is currently running a social organisation working towards normalising speech and communication disorders and advocating for a more inclusive and accessible society for people with disabilities.
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Season 5
“Even at that stage, I had no idea of autism. So I might go to the nursery, something as simple as driving a different route. And he would scream and be so distressed. I’d have to drag him out of the car and take him into the nursery. And hey wouldn’t understand why he was so upset. And everyone else would just go ‘Oh he’s two, he’s having a tantrum’. And those comments used to grate and eat me up inside. I think weirdly my unconscious bias, it’s a double edged sword, because part of my unconscious bias was going, you’re doing something wrong. But the other side was, I knew something wasn’t right as well. I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have the language or the knowledge to translate all these points he was struggling with.”
Matt Davis lives in London with his wife, Eliza and two children, Isaac and Tabitha.
13-year-old Isaac is autistic and was diagnosed with autism at age 3.
Matt writes a blog about this journey and shares his thoughts and feelings at mysonisaac.net
Matt is a Trustee of Autistica and Parent Patron and business ambassador for Ambitious About Autism.
He is also a partner at Red Brick Road, an advertising agency in London.
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“Women have not been allowed to move out of the house, or even have a professional carrier. Not at all, because that was according to the ruling system of Taliban. That led to a mentality being created unconsciously within me, that whenever I was thinking of a woman, there has been a word associated to that. And that word associated to women is the word ‘dependent’. And whenever I was thinking of being a woman, the first thing that I could think of was being an dependent individual, or a dependent human being. Who is fed by a man, who works day and night at home, but at the same time, is not rewarded like a man.”
At age 27, Hosna Jalil was the first woman appointed to a high Interior Ministry post in Afghanistan. She held the post of Deputy for Policy and Strategic Affairs and later Deputy for Women Affairs. Until the age of nine she lived under the Taliban regime, not being allowed to attend school. Despite this she went on to achieve a BA in Physics before completing a master’s degree in Business Management at the American University of Afghanistanan. Hosna is an independent, feminine, wandering soul.
“Even in our [Indian] education system, when we grow up, we are told these are the answers. Suddenly, you go abroad and study, and your faculty member asks you, what do you think? And the first thing that comes to your mind is like, what do you mean, what do I thin? You’re supposed to tell me what’s right. So when you get to this point in this profession, where there are no boundaries. You tend to start looking inwards. And you really start to question, what are the things that I value? What do I believe is right? And eventually, even your audience doesn’t matter. Because you present your truth. And what you’re saying is, this is what works for me, if you like it fine. If you don’t like it also fine, I respect that.”
Papa CJ is an award-winning, international stand-up comedian. He has performed over 2000 shows in over 25 countries. Forbes Magazine called him ‘the global face of Indian stand-up’ and Harvard Business Review called him ‘one of the most influential comedians around the world’. He has won awards for both Asia and India’s best stand-up comedian. He is also a motivational speaker and corporate training coach.
“So it’s this whole process of negotiating your identity. Who are you? When I came to New Zealand, I realised that I wasn’t quite as Indian as I thought I was. I had lots of friends who were international students from India, and I felt that I was, again, a little bit different from that. I had to then acknowledge the fact that growing up in Singapore means that had shaped my identity and who I was, as well. It’s actually when I moved here that I even acknowledged that which was quite a revelation for me. So this whole process of negotiating that, and then coming to a point in my life, where I thought, well, no, I’m not going to conform to something that people want.”
Priyanca Radhakrishnan is a Member of Parliament in the New Zealand Labour Party and a Minister of the Crown. Her portfolios include Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities. She is the first person of Indian origin to become a Minister in New Zealand.
Born in India, Priyanca went to school in Singapore, and then moved to New Zealand to further her education. She has spent her work life advocating on behalf of people whose voices are often unheard, including survivors of domestic violence, and exploited migrant workers. She strongly believes that everyone has the right to live with dignity – meaning equitable access to affordable housing, quality education and decent, secure work.
“I define myself as a local as a Muscovite and person with the Russian mentality. And my first language is Russian. But despite all this, people don’t perceive me as a local, much less as a Russian person. First of all, my appearance is not typical for a Russian person, also, my name and my religion. And every time I meet a new person, I feel like I have to prove that I speak language well, that I know this city and old traditions. And sometimes many people are simply surprised. They say how well you speak Russian, they compliment my Russian. It could be perhaps an example of a positive unconscious bias. And sometimes they think that I’m a liar, and some people could be just, frankly, rude to me.”
Safiya Yasmin Badzhva (pronounced Bajwa) is a 22-year-old marketing student from Moscow. She was born and raised in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. Safiya sees herself as 100% Muscovite, but her appearance doesn’t fit into the stereotypical image of a local Russian. Safiya feels that Moscow is getting more diverse, so it’s important to question the idea of xenophobia and racism in modern Russian society.
“I define myself as a local as a Muscovite and person with the Russian mentality. And my first language is Russian. But despite all this, people don’t perceive me as a local, much less as a Russian person. First of all, my appearance is not typical for a Russian person, also, my name and my religion. And every time I meet a new person, I feel like I have to prove that I speak language well, that I know this city and old traditions. And sometimes many people are simply surprised. They say how well you speak Russian, they compliment my Russian. It could be perhaps an example of a positive unconscious bias. And sometimes they think that I’m a liar, and some people could be just, frankly, rude to me.”
Safiya Yasmin Badzhva (pronounced Bajwa) is a 22-year-old marketing student from Moscow. She was born and raised in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. Safiya sees herself as 100% Muscovite, but her appearance doesn’t fit into the stereotypical image of a local Russian. Safiya feels that Moscow is getting more diverse, so it’s important to question the idea of xenophobia and racism in modern Russian society.
“For me, one of the many things that is most significant about being a person of colour, a brown person, having been brought up in the ‘70s, in an exclusively white English family, but in an almost exclusively white English context, is that the ideas and beliefs that I have gained and have been transmitted down through my parents, my grandparents, have influenced the way in which I think and behave. Not only towards people of colour, but to other people too.”
Nick Pendry identifies as a brown Indian man. He is married to a woman, and lives in southeast London with his two teenage children. Nick was adopted as a baby by a white English family. He is a social worker and family therapist, who has spent his entire working life in the public sector.
“I went to nursery school in the UK, but when I came back at the age of eight, I’d lost all my English. So the perception and the way you see a culture at that point is different. But I had my memories of that culture having had those younger years. One of the things that I find quite interesting is the way that you are viewed changes with the way that you are dressed. I grew up in Halifax, and my parents did what a lot of first generation migrants do which is desperately try and hold on to this culture that they had in their heads. So, if I was at home, I was dressed traditionally, if I was at school, I was dressed in my uniform, if I was with my friends, I was dressed in my jeans. And I have found that when people meet you, depending on how you are dressed, they will talk to you differently, they will relate to you differently.”
Syima Aslam is the founder and director of the Bradford Literature Festival (BLF), a 10-day literary and cultural celebration, which she established in 2014. The BLF welcomes more than 70,000 visitors to Bradford annually and is celebrated as the most socio-economically and ethnically diverse literary festival in the UK.
Under Syima’s directorship, the BLF has made a significant impact on the country’s literary landscape. It has been hailed as ‘one of the most innovative and inspirational festivals in the UK’, bringing together literature from all genres, promoting intercultural fluency, providing a platform for marginalised voices, and reflecting the changing face of contemporary Britain through a programme which celebrates diversity, empathy and artistic excellence.
Season 4
Amish is a diplomat, author and columnist. He is currently the Director of The Nehru Centre in London, the cultural wing of the Indian High Commission.
Amish has been listed among the 50 most powerful Indians by India Today magazine in 2019. Forbes India has regularly ranked Amish among the top 100 most influential celebrities in India. Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower Fellow, a prestigious American programme for outstanding leaders from around the world, in 2014.
Amish published his first book in 2010, and has written 9 books till date. His books have sold 5.5 million copies, and have been translated into 10 Indian and 9 international languages.
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Eliza Griswold, a contributing writer for the New Yorker, is a poet and journalist who was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for her book Amity and Prosperity. She’s a distinguished writer in residence at New York University and lives between New York and Philadelphia with her husband and son.
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Robin Shohet started his therapeutic career in 1976 working in a residential therapeutic community with people who had come out of psychiatric hospitals. He left in 1979 to work freelance as a therapist, supervisor and trainer. He is the author and editor of several books, the latest co-written with his wife, Joan, called In Love with Supervision: Creating Transformative Conversations. He is a student of A Course in Miracles, a book that has had a profound influence on his life.
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Jaishree Misra is an author of Indian origin living in Britain. She has written eight novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins. She has also written a non-fiction account of building a writer’s studio on the beach in her home state of Kerala, India. She is a postgraduate in English Literature from Kerala University and has two diplomas from the University of London, one in Broadcast Journalism and the other in Special Education. She has worked in special education, journalism and as a film classifier at the British Board of Film Classification. She lives in London with her husband and daughter. Her daughter, Rohini, is a woman with special needs and specific difficulties with language and communication.
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Indira Kaur Ahluwalia is an activist and entrepreneur turned advisor, coach, and now an author. She’s worked in federal government contracting, particularly international development, to build equity, accountability, and sustainability.
As Indira fulfilled her life’s passions and professional obligations, she was diagnosed with stage IV advanced breast cancer with bone metastasis at age 38. Her fight, and the lessons she learned, led her to write Fast Forward to Hope: Choosing to Build the Power of Self — a memoir to enable others to face and walk beyond their own issues.
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“When I came [to the UK], I realised in the last 16 years – it’s a gradual realisation of my own unconscious bias, of trying to be perfect. Trying to be this woman who puts on dinner at the right time, for everyone. But also who appears beautiful, intelligent, all those things. And only a few years ago, actually through the exposure of feminism movements here [in the UK]. I have began to ask myself why? Why do I want to be perfect? Is it because men want me to be like this? Or is this from my own standards? And where did this standards come from? So actually, from quite a few years back, my New Year’s resolution to myself has stayed the same. Try not to be perfect.”
Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the connections between landscape, ecology, identity and migration. She has specialised in conducting long-term projects that are demanding both physically and intellectually. For example, she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals for her Mother River project. Yan has published two photo books, ‘Mother River’ and ‘Forest’ with Hatje Cantz. She holds a PhD in Photography and lectures at the University of Huddersfield.
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“The fact that we have female body parts that are named after European men. This idea that the G-spot was named after Ernst Grafenberg in the 1950s, the Fallopian tubes, again named after a man, the Skene’s glands. And this is because the Europeans have done a very good job of documenting their findings, but they are new findings to them. They’ll document it, and then it’s disseminated across the board as if this is the standard for everyone to adopt. And anyone that that might have “discovered” this prior to the events are dismissed. So when I’ve written proposals for some sex journals about my research, about like, the Kunyaza tradition, and eastern Africa and their practises, they understand of sex and sexuality. Many times they don’t want to hear it unless I’m speaking about female genital mutilation”
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Helena Kennedy
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Season 3
“We were exactly the class which filled the Imperial hierarchy and could get a place in the East India Company or in the Raj Civil Service.
It was a guy called Dalrymple who ended up in the black hole of Calcutta in 1756. And so generations have been there one after another and like almost all the Brits, probably all the Brits whom I’d ever met, it was assumed that colonisation was an act of bringing civilisation to the poor benighted natives.”
William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards and prizes including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize to Thomas Cook travel Book Award, the SundayTimes young British writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuscinski and the Wolfson prize. He is also one of the co founders and co directors of the annual Jaipur Literary Festival.
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“What I’m saying is, is that because they’re not aware of their unconscious bias, they think they actually believe that what they’re doing is right. I mean, there are a lot of people who disagree with me, not just the people on the left or the right because many people refuse to recognise how complex racism is. People in the middle recognise that racism isn’t just black and white, it’s actually far more complex. And it reveals itself unconsciously, in all kinds of ways, both on the right and on the left. We tend to just think white people on the right are racist people and not people on the left as they are good. And I’m saying we should know what they’re doing is signalling virtue, they are not actually being virtuous.”
Katharine Birbalsingh is Headmistress and co-founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, London. Michaela is known for its tough-love behaviour systems, knowledge curriculum and teaching of kindness and gratitude. In 2017, OFSTED the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills graded the school as “Outstanding” in every category. “
Katharine read Philosophy & Modern Languages at The University of Oxford and has always taught in inner London. She has made numerous appearances on television and radio and has written for several UK publications. Katharine has written two books and edited a third…. and a fourth called The Power of Culture which has just been published. Whether you agree with Katharine or not, she will make you think. In the 2020 Birthday Honours, Katherine was appointed CBE.
Follow Katharine on Twitter: @Miss_Snuffy
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“I think these kids are so privileged. I knew that they were all going to third level education, they’re going to be doctors and engineers. Then I realised that the class structure was so profound and right from the very get go, where those kids would have been in, you know, local creches or play schools while the Traveller (indigenous ethnic group) kids were living on the other side of the road.”
Ken Mc Cue is a graduate of the International School of Politics and Culture, Moscow. He holds a Master of Philosophy Diploma in Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a PostGraduate Certificate in Cultural Planning from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Ken specialises in the area of Cultural Integration and Social Capital in Urban Regeneration. Ken is a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World and was officially declared an Atheist by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
In 1997, Ken co-founded Sports Against Racism Ireland SARI during the European Year against Racism. For more information check https://www.sari.ie/
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“We were told that everyone was butchered, was literally butchered on the way to India. Now supposing we were there, what would happen? I think it made me more resilient. Subconsciously, having escaped death at such close quarters and at such a young age. It allows me to be a little more cavalier in my approach to life. Not careless, but carefree.”
SP Rawal was born in 1940 to a rich landowner in what is today, Punjab, Pakistan. At the age of seven, he was forced to go through the trauma of India’s partition, travelling as part of a caravan of bullock carts, staying at a refugee camp, and doing all sorts of menial jobs. Today, aged 80 he’s the chairman of a leading brokerage firm, dealing in arbitration support both nationally and internationally.
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This is an extended two part episode. Part one is just under half an hour, followed by a brief segue into part two which is approximately twenty minutes. Please do listen to both!
“The other thing that was my unconscious bias, I’d always perceived myself as a strong woman. I am a strong woman and I’ve coped with some pretty significant adversity in my life with pragmatism and a degree of humanity. But this one stripped me not only of my humanity, it stripped me of my motherhood, it stripped me of me. And that was very, very surprising. And I have come to understand why it is.”
Kate Nicholls is the author of Under the Camelthorn Tree in which she shares her experiences of raising her five children in Botswana, living in a lion conservation camp, and home-schooling them. Kate is currently running a homeschool business in Rome and is passionate about integrated education. She is also writing her second book.
Content Warning. This episode deals with sexual abuse and sexual violence.
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“So you get respect when you are someone when you’re doing something, when you’re no one people forget you. They forget what you have done for them. They forget who you are, or they even forget what you have done in your past. So at that time, I learned that if I will not accept myself for who I am, if I will not respect myself for who I am, no one is going to do that. Because the world is very cruel. So you have to stand for yourself and you have to accept yourself for who you are.”
Naira Manzoor is from Kashmir currently living and working in Delhi. Naira says she is 24, feels like 65 but has the soul of a teenager. She loves books, deep talks, travel, singing, thinking and exploring life. Her life is focused around learning and she believes in being herself and refuses to change for anyone. Life is a journey, a taxing one and she says, I am up for it.
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“Let’s say now, you’re getting married. You’ve no relations to call on to come to your wedding. You’re aware of that at the time. Then when your first kid is born, you’ve nobody to ring up and tell – aunts, uncles or anybody. Nobody to ring up. You have plenty of friends, which is great. But you could always feel the other person had all the wives, uncles, aunts to ring up, whereas I had none of that. Now, I thought about it, but I didn’t let it get under my skin. Because if you allowed things like that to get under your skin, you’d be seriously affected. And I wouldn’t let it affect me, because I still knew I had to survive and get on with my life.”
Jude Hughes was born in Dublin in 1941, to an unmarried Irish woman and a black man. He was initially told his father was from Trinidad. He spent his early life in St. Patrick’s mother and baby home. The rest of Jude’s childhood was spent in institutions – first in a convent, and later in an industrial school, where he learned a trade. Growing up in Ireland, he rarely saw another black person.
Linked to Jude’s story is the recent report of Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, released on 12th January 2021. The 3,000-page report details the conduct and survivors of religious institutions in Ireland. These institutions housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage. Most relevant to Jude is the policy of the institutions preventing him from tracing his parents, or as Jude says, being told that the information was ‘redacted’. Ireland denies adopted people the legal right to their own information and files. The report is understood to chronicle many of the lies and obfuscations of priests, nuns and officials.
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“There still is an aspect of always having to come out, basically, because the status quo is that you’re straight. Therefore, in work and that kind of thing, there’s always a bit of friction there when you meet someone new who doesn’t know. You will end up telling them, you know, ‘at the weekend, what did you do?’. Oh, well, I was with my boyfriend or whatever. And there’s always going to be that, well, what are they gonna think about that? I mean, it’s not a problem, I suppose in the context of, British people, or Irish people nowadays. or anything like that. With people from countries where it’s not acceptable to be gay, I definitely do assign them. I’m maybe a little bit more worried. For example, in work if I had a colleague who was from somewhere where it’s not acceptable to be gay, to tell them about, you know what I did over the weekend with my boyfriend, because I may be a little bit more worried about what they might think.”
Seamus Beirne is 29 years old (30 next month). He lives in Oslo with his boyfriend. He works as a data analyst for a grocery delivery company.
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“And so, I was brought into this family, who already had two children. They were my parents’ biological children, two boys, very white. So, it was very interesting, when we would go out as a family. I would be stood there with classically sort of Pakistani colouring, you know, I have jet black hair. I have amazingly dark eyes, with my brothers and my parents who are blond and blue eyes. And it was, you know, it was quite amusing, really, because I could see people looking at us as a family, and questions going through their heads and said to say, what’s happened with the daughter, she looks a bit different.”
Anna Harrington grew up in the ’70s in a white, middle class area on the Pennines, an area juxtaposed to the multicultural population of Oldham. She is adopted and mixed race. She has both benefited from white privilege and experienced racism throughout her childhood. This has allowed her to viscerally recognise the effects of not fitting in and how the social environment influences behaviours. She now has her own business advising on how to enable employees to be productive and thrive through work.
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“And I walked away thinking, this kind of dominant view as a man, that if you have an encounter, that you have to kind of become this alpha male who’s gonna kick butt. Even though I spend a lot of work on myself trying to remove the idea that violence is the way to solve problems and so forth. That, in that challenge, I couldn’t just say to the guy, well, actually, given the choice, I’ll always sidestep an opportunity to engage in violence as the kind of dominant way in which people settle their disputes. I just defaulted back into that.”
Hári Sewell is founder and Director of HS Consultancy and is a former executive director of health and social care in the NHS. He is a writer and speaker in his specialist area of social justice, equalities and ethnicity, race and culture in mental health. Hári is honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and Specialist Guest Lecturer at University of Bradford. Hári has had various books, articles and book chapters published, with new material emerging regularly.
Hári has a reputation for being a strong communicator. He is a nationally and internationally recognised trainer on critical race theory, unconscious bias, leading diverse organisations and teams and issues of equality and social justice.
Hári worked with another local campaigner to secure services for survivors of sexual violence and currently runs a campaign “Men Supporting Women’s Rights” including “Men Against Rape”. He is increasingly studying forms of masculinity and the possibilities in practice and employee relations to recognise the intersections between masculinity and other aspects of identity.
www.hsconsultancy.org.uk
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“I didn’t write politically conscious songs or songs that talked about the skin colour of my first child. I didn’t write those things, saying, I’m going to change the world, and this is how I’m going to do it. I wrote those songs, because that’s the way that I felt, like everything that I do with my music. There’s not a disconnection, and it’s just a focus on ‘how can I market and get my music out’. I write my music the way that I feel. And that’s all it is. Because my music is an expression of how I feel as a distinction. It’s not a commodity to be packaged up. And that’s what was happening when I was 19, when ‘role model’ was put on me as a label. The media and the industry infrastructure were trying to craft me into the person that they thought that I should be because I was a brown woman, I was rapping writing my own songs.”
Teremoana Rapley currently works as a senior creative economy advisor for the local government cultural and economic development agency, Auckland Unlimited in New Zealand. She is a stalwart of the music industry as an award-winning singer songwriter. She stepped into the industry at the age of 14 with politically conscious rap group Upper Hutt Posse and was inducted into the country’s music hall of fame in 2018. She has worked in indigenous broadcast for over two decades gaining over 3000 production credits as an executive producer and many production roles. Teremoana has worked in a community action and development space for the past 30 years with her latest co-created social change initiative focussing on intergenerational and intercultural place-based community building using the arts as the connector.
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Season 2
Shashi Tharoor, author of 20 books, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, current Member of Parliament of Trivandrum, Kerala and my brother.
“You are different – your accent speaks of privilege. Foreign living and foreign exposure, and therefore you’re not authentically one of us is what some people think. Accent can be used to separate people from the person noticing the accent.”
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Dr. Ghida Ibrahim is a global citizen with many hats; a technologist, a data scientist, a tech for good entrepreneur, a community builder, a lecturer, a speaker who has appeared on TEDx, a World Economic Forum appointed domain expert and an occasional standup comedian.
“If you’re able to speak many languages, this means that you’re able to live many lives, or be immersed in many identities” “Be the best version of yourself and then the world will adjust to you eventually”.
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In early September of 2019, Aditya Atri was defined by what he did for a living, what car he drove, what were his origins, what was his status in society. Post late September 2019, it is about Aditya Atri who has cancer, who should be looked at differently. He is a patient and expected to behave in a certain manner, that is defined by the biases people have about what a cancer patient should look like. How should a cancer patient behave? Are you defined by your cancer?
Aditya Atri has over 30 years’ experience as an advertising and marketing executive He has managed large consumer facing programmes and campaigns for both local and multinational brands across South Asia, Middle East and Australia. He has held leadership positions across financial services, retail and marketing communication companies.
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“I guess I could see unconscious bias in other people’s ideas of a Muslim. You could be White, Asian, Black, you could be from any type of background. It’s a religion, like other religions where you choose to become a Muslim and fall in that religion. People make a lot of assumptions, on what a Muslim looks like. It could be anyone.”
Matt Henderson is originally from Scotland and lives in Yorkshire. With over 20 years’ experience as a community worker, Matt is currently working as a project manager for Bradford for Everyone, a UK Government social integration pilot programme.
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Content Warning: This episode deals with material of a sexual nature.
“The Kama Sutra was written in metaphors. And it talks about pleasure so delicately and with such elegance and refinement that it actually inspired about 2000 years of ancient Indian literature.”
Seema Anand is a mythologist and a storyteller with a focus on women’s narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature’s of ancient India. Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. This was the first text to give women a platform of equality.
Seema Anand is also the author of The Arts of Seduction.
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“A lot of the young people that I work with, see themselves in a troubled state. But the minute they start engaging with something positive, they have an identity shift, they start to position themselves as an artist. And that takes them away from what they perceive themselves to be in the past. We can all create these identity shifts, but it’s about just taking that one positive step and having a reinforced positive loop to keep going.”
Rosemary Jane Cronin is an artist and university lecturer specialising in fine art, gender and psychoanalysis who has exhibited and performed at The Freud Museum and The National Portrait Gallery in London. Her film Reverie was selected by the Guggenheim Foundation as part of their ‘Under the Same Sun’ season in 2016. As an educator, Rosemary works for the Outreach department at University of Arts London and museums and galleries across London to help make art accessible for all.
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“When I pray five times a day, it’s interesting that the way I start my prayers, I refer to God, as the God of all creation. I don’t say the God of Muslims ,I say the God of all creation which includes everyone on Earth. So that’s part of my faith. And that’s why I feel that my faith underpins and underlines the way I behave, and I interact with people.”
Reza Beyad is a multilingual entrepreneur, philanthropist and fundraiser. He’s a practising Muslim who completed his schooling from a Jesuit school. One of his main interests is to engage in constructive interfaith dialogues and help build bridges between different faiths and communities. His own faith underpins his efforts to create a more caring, just and inclusive society. In 2014, for his work in this regard, he was given the freedom of the City of London.
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“In 2017/2018 I opened a restaurant called Tapestry in New York City that served food from 17 or 18 countries at one time on the menu. And people loved it. It was in the West Village. And we had the who’s who of New York coming to eat with us. But there were certain food critics that were absent. And I then got an email from one food critic who said to me, don’t you think you’re being too daring that you’re cooking something other than Indian? And I asked them, do you ask this question to all the American chefs born and brought up in America, who are cooking French, Italian, Vietnamese, Mexican and Indian? Do you question them about the cuisine they are cooking?”
Suvir Saran is the author of three celebrated cookbooks: Indian Home Cooking, American Masala, and Masala Farm, as well as the chef and owner of The House of Celeste, a modern Indian restaurant in Gurgaon.
Saran’s approachable style has helped demystify Indian cuisine and earned him the first Michelin star awarded to an Indian restaurant in America.
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“Others conspire that if you’re not cut, you are not clean, nobody will marry you. You are not going to be the same as other girls. You’re going to school and you feel like you’re different. Because you are not cut. That is why I am an activist and campaigner on female genital mutilation.”
Ifrah Ahmed is an Irish-Somali activist, campaigner and Civil Society Organisation director working in the field of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting abandonment. She has also set up the United Youth of Ireland in 2008, in response to youth immigrant integration issues in her adopted country.
The Ifrah Foundation is working with the UN for the worldwide eradication of FGM/C by 2030.
A feature film, A Girl from Mogadishu, based on her life is out now.
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Season 1
For Episode 1 of Stories of Unconscious Bias, join Smita Tharoor in a conversation with Bollywood actor Vidya Balan.
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Brendan Gilbert is a born and bred Londoner of West Indian Heritage, who runs a security systems company based in South London.
“We’re all human beings you know, let’s just get on. And I think that’s where I kind of say brush it off, but be able to keep going.”
Nitin Sawhney is a CBE, a composer, producer, and multifaceted polymath who engages with the arts in every conceivable way through the filter of music.
“The colour of my skin marked me out as it didn’t matter whether I was an immigrant or from immigrant heritage, it was the colour of my skin that they saw and attacked, which is why I wrote an album called Beyond skin rather than beyond heritage or beyond anything else. It was actually the fact that your skin colour will be the first thing that people encounter or will see.”
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Cheryl Hernandez is an executive trainer, life coach, author and international speaker from Trinidad & Tobago who has spent over 40 years helping clients to improve their personal and professional relationships – from CEOs to teenagers. Formerly a music teacher and ordained minister, Cheryl is known for her ability to turn difficult students and employees around.
“And one thing about our culture that makes it a little challenging for us when we come abroad and places like the UK and the US, some of the biases and the discrimination goes straight over our heads, because we’re not accustomed to it.”
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AJ Juer is a transgender guy living in New Zealand. He’s currently based in Christchurch, where he studied at the National Academy of singing and Dramatic Art. AJ has a degree in performing arts, and is now pursuing a career as an actor.
“I accepted transgender people, but in my head, and this was something that I wouldn’t say to anyone, I sort of thought, Oh, isn’t that weak to change your body like, shouldn’t you accept your own body.”
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Nandita Das is an actor and director and has acted in more than 40 feature films in 10 different languages. Nandita has been passionately supporting the campaign against colour bias, ‘India’s Got Colour’. She was conferred the ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters’ by the French Government and was the first Indian to be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the International Women’s Forum.
“The minute I would do the role of an educated woman, an affluent person, I will immediately be told either by the director or the camera person or the makeup person that I know you don’t like to lighten your skin. But just for this, could you, because this is an educated open character.”
The charity Nandita supports “India’s Got Colour“
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Neena Bhandari has been a career journalist for over three decades. She has worked in India, the UK and Australia, writing on a range of issues from Health and Science to Environment and Development, gender and human rights to travel and indigenous issues.
I was at an international conference and had a very interesting conversation with one of the speakers who had walked up to my table. But when I met him outside at the end of the conference, he was shocked with disbelief on his face when he saw me walking with a caliper because he had no idea that I had a disability.
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Giles Duley is a documentary photographer and storyteller, whose work focuses on the long term impact of conflict. Giles is also the CEO of the charity, Legacy of War foundation.
I was injured in 2011 while working in Afghanistan. I stepped on a landmine and lost my legs and my arm. I was 39 years old when that happened. And I went from being a white, privileged, middle class English man who travelled the world who had a very privileged position( and I was aware of that) to somebody who’s living with a very serious disability. And it was interesting because I suddenly saw how the world treated me differently.
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Google the name “Lemn Sissay” and all the returning hits will be about him because there is only one Lemn Sissay in the world. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA nominated award winning writer, international poet, performer playwright, artist and broadcaster and Chancellor of The University of Manchester . Lemn Sissay was awarded an MBE for services to literature.
“What happened to me is that because of unconscious bias, I was stolen from my mother, I was stolen from my family. I was brought up in institutions, with foster parents who I believe, had a lot of unconscious biases towards people of colour.”
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We take our upbringing for granted and it was only with the benefit of hindsight I realised how lucky I was. Growing up in pluralistic India taught me the value of tolerance and the appreciation of accepting differences.
I arrived in London after my undergraduate degree in the 80’s with a firm sense of my own identity and a belief that the world is an accepting inclusive place. It was only through sharing stories that I began to realise that I truly had an accepting, liberal, non-judgemental, secular upbringing. There was very little in my backpack that was influencing me unconsciously. I was very fortuitous.
We are defined by our narrative, our personal story, our experiences. These have an impact on how we make judgements and form opinions. A lot of time that’s just fine but every once in a while, we make snap conclusions that have a negative outcome either for the other person or ourselves. Just one particular experience can lead to a lifelong belief.
Knowledge is power, and I firmly believe through learning and reflecting we can effect positive change.
Since starting my own company Tharoor Associates in 2009, I have had the privilege of hearing some wonderful stories from different parts of the world. These stories were all shared in the context of understanding our Unconscious Bias. As I heard them, I realised that other than some obvious cultural differences, we all have very similar experiences. I wanted to share these stories with a wider audience, so I decided to have podcasts on the unconscious bias.
I have had the huge privilege of talking to a wide range of people around the world from California to New Zealand to Bombay with London in the middle. They share their stories and how those experiences have impacted on their unconscious biases. They tell us, the listener, what they learned from those experiences.
To begin a real process of change, we have to look at our own Unconscious Bias and move away from these potentially damaging patterns of behaviour. Assumptions are internal; we carry them around like a backpack on our back. Before any change can be made in any relationship, we need to look into our backpacks.
I do hope that these stories will resonate with you and will help you the listener reflect and look into your backpack. Happy Listening.
Season 8
“And hence, I am giving you a compliment that in spite of your grey hair, you look amazing. That you must have looked so much better when you were younger. And that’s another unconscious bias that we automatically assume that youth is prettier. And I have to agree that youth is beautiful anyway, but to think that you looked better then is what I’m getting to…”
Seema Anand is a mythologist, a storyteller with a focus on women’s narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature of ancient India.
Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. This was the first text to give women a platform of equality. It was a brave book that tried to change the position of women in society.
Her seminal work ‘The Arts of Seduction’, is a commentary on the metaphors and lost narratives of the Kama Sutra is an effort to reclaim the book for its intended purpose.
“So, when you get embedded in a network, what happens is your freedom to think wider than what the interests of the network represents is compromised. What happens is that your faithfulness to a tradition becomes unfortunately, unfaithfulness to your own personal integrity. Because there are very many questions with which you’re struggling in your life. And no system in the world, no religious institution or structure in the world can accommodate those questions, much less answer them.”
Professor Valson Thampu is a former teacher and academic administrator in higher education, as well as a theologian and freelance contributor to the national print media. He was a member of the Delhi Minorities Commission (2000-2004) and the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (2004-2007). He was nominated twice to the National Integration Council (2004-2014) under the category, ‘distinguished citizens of India’. He now lives in retirement in Kerala, South India, actively addressing issues pertaining to religious reform. His recent book titled Beyond Religion: Imaging a New Humanity is the manifesto of his reformist agenda.
“And I started to analyse where these tics were coming from, you know, tics in Italian – and I can’t speak Italian. So I spoke to one of the guys who I work with, and he said, is it possible that when I was young, everything that I’ve heard all the words that I’ve absorbed, actually remain inside my head? I never forget them, but maybe lost the ability to recall them. But everything is there as a memory and Tourette Syndrome, the vocal tics, has an ability to access those in a rapid sort of speed.”
Paul Stevenson is a lived experience ambassador at Genius Within and a public speaker. Genius Within is a social enterprise established in the UK to help neurodivergent people unlock their talents, whilst acknowledging and celebrating that this diversity forms part of the rich tapestry of human experience.
They advise governments on policy and provide consultancy to businesses, driving systemic change that allows all employees to thrive. They provide in-work support in the form of coaching, training and assessments. They also support neurodiverse/neurodivergent thinkers who are not in the workplace, who might be studying, unemployed or in the criminal justice system.
As Paul says of himself “I have Tourette Syndrome- it doesn’t have me! I’m not broken and don’t need fixing.”
See https://geniuswithin.org/what-is-neurodiversity/ for further information on Genius Within.
“And so our heroes as youth were not doctors and lawyers, or engineers, or politicians. They were quite literally like mobsters, and mafia types. Because those were individuals in our neighbourhood who had any kind of social standing influence and access to capital. They also knew how to make money, and they often provided opportunities, both financially and socially, for everyone in the neighbourhood. And so those are my early heroes. And often how they’re portrayed in the media, you know the common conception, as he’s kind of like ruthless, cold hearted. Lacking a moral compass kind of characters, who just have it on neighbourhoods and manipulate people and destroy society.”
Jodi Anderson Jr. is the CEO and Co-founder of Rézme, an EdTech platform that facilitates economic and social mobility through specialized recruiting, professional development, and personalized learning for justice-impacted citizens. After serving ten years in juvenile and adult prisons, Jodi earned his BA in Political Science and an MA in Education from Stanford University.
His non-profit PipeDreamers helps to coordinate diversion programming in the Bay Area while bringing coding and design courses to youth incarcerated in juvenile facilities across Northern California. As an alumnus of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program, he continues to be an advocate for criminal justice reform and access to higher education.
“I just had a lot of questions about the culture of noise we live in. And I was a bit fed up with people just constantly having opinions which to me was something jarring. The way people were jumping on the bandwagons to offer their opinion on absolutely everything and it’s all black and white. I felt like all this noise, you almost can’t hear yourself think, which is why the idea of silence came about.”
Ayisha Malik is author of the Sofia Khan novels, This Green and Pleasant Land and The Movement. She was winner of the Diversity Book Awards 2020, and teaches creative writing for the academies, Faber and Curtis Brown. Ayisha lives in London.
“I have always loved my faith, and I have wanted to fully embrace who I am. So wearing a headscarf, praying, being Muslim is just, it’s literally a core part of who I am and I want to be able to write about anything I want to with passion, authenticity & honesty. I also want to be able to communicate with people, I don’t want to create a barrier between me and anybody else. Even though my physical appearance might create certain barriers, but I work really hard to remove them.”
Remona Aly is a journalist and broadcaster in the UK with a passion for faith, lifestyle and identity. She writes for The Guardian, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought and has been a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Something Understood,a half hour programme which explores a theme across different faiths and traditions through music, prose and poetry. She is also a podcast host for various platforms.
Remona is Director of Communications for Exploring Islam Foundation which specialises in PR campaigns and creative resources to better understand Islam. For example, one of her campaigns highlighted untold stories of solidarity between Muslims and Jews, with a focus on the Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews from the Nazis in World War II.
Remona is the former Deputy Editor of emel, a vibrant and glossy British Muslim lifestyle magazine which was the first of its kind to launch nationwide in the UK.
“My dream was to become a teacher and I would play ‘school’ every single day. And I could go places in my mind. I was in foster care and I was not having the best situation with my life. I began to dream and I would play school every day and it would take me away from foster care. It would take me away from the abuse. It would take me away from the neglect. It would take me away from the feelings of wishing that I was dead and so playing school was my safe place. And so I realised that I could go anywhere if I just dream.”
Anthony Swann became the first sitting teacher ever to be appointed to the State Board of Education by the Governor of Virginia, USA in 2021. Anthony has been in education for 16 years as a classroom teacher and instructional coach. He has had the privilege of teaching every elementary grade except kindergarten. Anthony is currently the assistant principal of Monterey Elementary in Roanoke, VA. In 2018, Anthony began a program entitled “Guys with Ties” to teach boys the importance of honesty, integrity, and character inside and outside of the classroom.
In 2021, Anthony was elected by his peers to be the Teacher of the Year in two different schools. If those accolades were not enough, Anthony then became the 2021 Virginia State Teacher of the Year.
“I have a very strong centre. And it was destabilised by Oxford [University], but it wasn’t destroyed. And that kind of self-belief has saved me. I don’t think I’m better than anybody else, or I’m a superwoman or any of that. But I do know that I can do some of the stuff I do and I’m good at it. And that the bastards will not beat me, that really drives me.”
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was exiled from her birthplace, Uganda, in 1972. Yasmin is a journalist, broadcaster, author and part time professor of journalism. She writes for the I newspaper and Sunday Times magazine and has written for the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications She has won several awards including the Orwell prize for political writing and in 2017, National Press Awards columnist of the year prize. She was specially commended for this award again in 2018. She is a national and international public speaker, a consultant on diversity and inclusion and trustee of various arts organisations. She is also the co-founder of the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Their new report ‘The Inner Lives of Troubled Young Muslims’ was published in November 2020. Her recent books include Refusing the Veil, Exotic England about England’s infatuation with the east, In Defence of Political Correctness and Ladies Who Punch. She has twice been voted the 10th most influential Asian in Britain. She has eight Honours degrees and sits on the boards of arts organisations. She is also a keen cook and theatre buff.
“I think affinity bias is the one where I feel that is the key. The deal breaker is that if you can meet someone, and you can see something in them, that reflect you. Be it a principle, a belief, a way that you would like to be seen. I think that’s the one that draws you in. Some people are very naturally charismatic, which means it’s not learned. It’s not trained. But I also think there’s an element of how does that charisma impact and affect us in different ways?”
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator.
Anthony is the winner of the 2023 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize for his most recent poetry collection “Heritage Aesthetics” published by Granta.
The chair of judges, journalist Samira Ahmed, said Anthony’s poetry “is beautiful, but does not sugar coat. The arsenic of historical imperial arrogance permeates the Britain he explores in his writing. And the joy of this collection comes from his strength, knowledge, maturity, but also from deeply felt love.”
His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts.
His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year.
In 2022 he founded Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press.
This is what one reviewer says of Anthony and his work ‘One of the most politically engaged poets of our time, Anthony holds the busy intersectionality of history, politics and ideology in poems that remain fresh and open.
Season 7
“We all have an unconsious bias, where we’re walking down the road, and I could see somebody and I will just presume their life, or wonder what they do, or how many kids they have. I will just be inquisitive like that, because it’s in my nature, I think, as a barber.”
Content warning: This episode deals with themes of sexual exploitation and death.
Laura is a competitive powerlifter, mother of four and grandmother of two. She lives in Dublin, Ireland. Laura Kavanagh is the co-host of the ‘Talk of the Town’ podcast that features “3 Dublin girls addressing different issues of daily life”. It can be found on Instagram at @talkofthetown_podcast_, as well as her personal handle @Thismammy.
Laura has many stories to share.
“And so, throughout my teen years into college, and even into adulthood, my entire drive was about just proving them wrong, or trying to shake in a very improper way and very useless way the weight that was in my backpack. Rather than dealing with it and addressing the self-limiting beliefs head on and addressing that unconscious bias head on, I carried it around with me. And that’s the thing, it became such a weight on me because I refused to deal really with the hurt and the pain that went with all those things.”
Carlos Hidalgo is a Life Design coach, a Corporate Culture Development Consultant, two-time author, TEDx speaker and international keynote speaker.
Over the span of the last 25 years, Carlos has held corporate roles, started his own entrepreneurial ventures, led his company to receive multiple Inc. 5000 awards and has served in non-profit organisations. Carlos is now dedicated to helping others design a life they love to live, through his Life Design coaching and Corporate Culture services.
Carlos’s last book, The UnAmerican Dream details his journey from a workaholic to a life that he loves.
You can follow Carlos on Twitter @cahidalgo or on Instagram @life_design_living
“The things that we lost are not the important things in life. The important things in life, first of all, is the love that you have seen in your home. That’s one, number two, is the integrity that you have seen in your home, and the integrity that you have seen in your mother, the integrity that you have seen in me, the integrity that we have taught you over the years to you and your siblings, that matters.
What also is important is the truth and the ability to speak the truth, always speak the truth, even when the words that you speak, will come back to harm you. You speak the truth.”
Carlos Hidalgo has more than four decades of executive management expertise and development of strategic programs for Fortune 500, mid-market companies and non-profits.
With an extensive knowledge of Latin America, Carlos has developed programs for Logoi (publishing), the Government Tourist Office of Mexico, and for bus builders in Mexico and Brazil.
He also has widespread experience of the non-profit sector having served as the Chief Operating Officer of Word of Life, an international non-profit organization. In that capacity, he directed long range and day-to-day operations in 81 countries around the world.
Carlos was appointed Commissioner on the Michigan State Commission on Spanish Speaking affairs by Michigan Governor John Engler and served one term.
Carlos presently serves as a member of the governing board of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.
“We live in a in a post-colonial society. So for example, every time I come back to the country, there are a series of signs that come to the surface of my skin, in almost a hurtful way. And that is in that every person that I see, for example, in advertising or TV, is aspirational. And they look very European, and usually they’re kind of light skin, and their features have nothing or almost nothing to do with 90% of the population in the country. And I find that shocking, that it is still very accepted.”
Monica Alcazar-Duarte is a Mexican-British multi-disciplinary visual artist, whose work acknowledges her indigenous heritage while exploring current ideals of progress. Her work references Western society’s obsession with speed, expansion, and resource accumulation as an index of advancement, at a time in which ecological disaster looms. It considers other ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world.
She embraces themes related to science and technology and their influence over society and the natural world. In her projects she mixes images and new technologies, such as Augmented Reality, to create multi-layered work, producing meaning through seemingly disconnected narratives. Monica’s work has been exhibited and collected throughout Europe, Mexico and the United States.
“It means feeling so othered that you clearly stick out in a certain context. That might be the way you look, your race. In my case, it was being black at university. But in that same context, even though I was so visible – and it was so clear that I was present and there because I stuck out – I was also so hyper-invisible because I was in the minority. My voice was felt so insignificant, and I felt so unimportant and I felt so undervalued in that same context. So it was a weird feeling to navigate, to feel visible and invisible at the exact same time.”
Vanessa Maria is a DJ, Broadcaster at Foundation FM, and a host at Resident Advisor.
Named as one of the most important young people in music, Vanessa has made her mark on radio stations across the country sharing her love for underground UK music. She’s been busy making appearances at Boiler room, Dazed Magazine, Warehouse Project and HÖR in Berlin.
Vanessa’s work in and around mental health has also not gone unnoticed.
As the key presenter at Resident Advisor, she currently hosts a music and mental health-related podcast and documentary series. She has been named as a leader in shaping the future of London’s nightlife by The Face Magazine.
“And herein lies the rub. I mean, once you get used to [technology], you absolutely cannot do without them. And then you wonder how you managed before. They are absolutely beautiful but what they also do is they take possession of your soul. Even the very fact of writing a novel on a computer. I think I must be the last person on Earth, well, maybe I’m not – I write with a pencil in an exercise book. Why? Because it seems to be more expendable. When you write on the computer, there’s an air of finality about it. And I don’t want that, because at that first draft stage, it’s a slippery fish that can go in any direction.”
Ashok Ferrey is the author of five books, all of them nominated either for Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize or its State Literary Award. He read pure mathematics at Oxford and was a builder in London before becoming a writer. Ashok Ferrey’s new book, The Unmarriageable Man just won the Gratiaen Prize – Sri Lanka’s premier literary prize founded by Michael Ondaatje.
In a parallel world Ashok is an architect whose last building, The Cricket Club Cafe, was nominated for a Geoffrey Bawa Award for Excellence in Architecture. By day Ashok is also a personal trainer.
“Diversity comes in many forms and one of those forms is not having everybody going down the same funnel. Doing their GCSEs, doing their A-Levels, doing a degree going and doing internships during their holidays. Going on the milk rounds and choosing a bank to work in. You know, it’s all very narrow, isn’t it? Actually if somebody’s been a professional musician for a number of years, they’ve had all sorts of adversity to overcome and. And having different life experiences really adds to a team and to a business.”
Nicola Horlick is a British investment fund manager nicknamed ‘superwoman’ in the media for balancing her high-flying finance career with bringing up six children. She graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a degree in Jurisprudence, later joining SG Warburg as a graduate trainee in 1983.
She was initially placed in the asset management division of Mercury Asset Management, where she stayed for the following 8 years, becoming a director at the age of 28. In 1991, she moved to Morgan Grenfell Asset Management and in 1992 was made Managing Director of the UK investment division.
In 1997, Nicola was asked to set up a UK investment business for SocGen, a French bank, with the aim of accumulating £5bn of funds under management over the following 5 years. In 2013, she founded Money&Co, a peer-to-peer lending platform where she remains as CEO today.
“And I remember when I was working with Cat Stevens, and he found Islam. And he tried to convert me to Islam. And then he said, Chris, you’re still searching, and until you find that, you’re not going to be settled. And I agreed with it. But he couldn’t persuade me to lead my whole life and take on this new life. So I had to have an encounter with God that was personal and real, which I did have, and that’s what turned me around.”
Christos Demetriou is an entrepreneur, music producer, songwriter and pastor.
Chris’ commercial history embraces multiple areas of business activity, including a sports promotion and public relations company, a television broadcast network (with affiliates in 28 countries), an entertainment exchange portal, a media rights and brokerage business (still active after 32 years) and a registered charity (celebrating 32 years).
Chris is also the author of four books and hosted “It’s All Greek to Me,” a TV programme which is aired in 36 countries.
Chris is responsible for three top 5 chart hits and two number 1 songs. One of Chris’s compositions featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games and appears in Q magazine’s Top 100 Singles of All Time (at number 77). Guinness Book of Records cited the original version as being the first ‘sample’ ever used in a music production.
Having worked in different capacities with many well-known celebrities, Chris is professionally linked to world renown music artists such as Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Mike d’Abo and John Kongos.
In 1990 Chris and his wife Loraine founded Cornerstone Ministries, a registered charity and Evangelical Christian church based in Surrey. Cornerstone Ministries started as a small Bible Study that grew rapidly to a congregation now exceeding 600 people. Cornerstone is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community made up of 41 nations.
Here is a link to the song he mentions in this interview: He’s Gonna Step on You Again
“Historically, epilepsy was believed to be caused by demons. So that automatically put anybody who had a seizure, or a fit, as in the evil camp. Now we sort of know that it’s caused by an electrical imbalance in the brain. But still, it’s a disease that’s stigmatised and looked down upon. I remember when I was diagnosed, the doctor could not have done a worse job of telling me. He almost couldn’t look me in the eye. He avoided any deep conversation about it and I was in and out of the office in just a few minutes, and then saw him treating an old lady with so much tenderness and care. I wondered what was wrong with me and, of course, it was epilepsy.”
Richard Thomas and his wife Susanna have led Hillside Church in Wimbledon for 27 years, where he is the pastor. Richard also serves as chaplain to The Priory Hospital, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Cancer Centre London. He is passionate about how we respond spiritually in our darkest hours.
“It was small things, it was kind of telling me that I wasn’t good at something, or even teachers telling you that you could have tried harder, or you should have done better at that. And you kind of build up, and I built up, these just small things, bit, by bit, by bit, that led me to a stage of thinking. Well, I’m just no good at anything. And I’m just not confident and everything fills me with fear.”
Jo Uff is a Confidence Coach based in England for women who want to lead a more fulfilling life, but feel that something is holding them back from being, doing, and having more of what they want.
Jo supports them to reignite their interest in life, move forward, and achieve the changes they want to make. She works with them to define their future with intention, overcome the personal blocks holding them back, and take actions towards achieving what they now want in their personal or professional life.
“People would constantly ask me where I’m from, or like what my education background was. And for me, that was them asking me his questions to almost belittle me. Until that day that I met you, and you asked me, what if they just want to know where you’re from and what your background is, just out of curiosity? I had never thought of it like that. And it was such a liberating experience for me because I had created this bondage for myself. And I was living in it, believing that I will never be taken seriously because I’m not a man and I’m not of a certain age. So all of these stereotypes that I have of people buried deeply in my mind, they do impact the way that I treat people and the way I think. As unintentional as they are, I definitely don’t believe that they’re harmless. So this, for me, is unconscious bias.”
Octoli Tuccu is a Learning & Development expert with over a decade of experience. Octoli is originally from Nagaland in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, in the northeast of India. She has lived in five countries including the USA, Qatar, Thailand, China and India. Octoli has trained over a thousand professionals globally on various leadership development subjects.
Season 6
“I recently read how it’s only .01 percent of our DNA that’s responsible for the expression of our skin colour and our traits, all of which are our outward appearance that we define as race. But those things are the things that we use to define each other. We are biased when we look at a person, when we are talking specifically about race”
Marguerite is an American writer and editor with a background in literature, translation, and magazine publishing.
Marguerite currently has a book out titled The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, which you can locate at here website linked below.
Focusing on world cultures, she aims to understand the nuances that separate us, with the resolve to further our understanding of each other through her work.
Marguerite has spent many years living in different environments that are & foreign to her – Holland, Chile, France, and now lives in Sri Lanka.
She is currently editing memoirs by Iranian, Kuwaiti-American, Bangladeshi, and Ugandan-American authors, and gathering writings for an artist book about birth traditions around the globe.
Marguerite recently curated a collection of diverse stories by authors from many Muslim worlds, entitled The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, which was published by Penguin in December 2019.
She says her mission is to try to promote cultural awareness by supporting the voices of those heard less often than her, specifically through literature.
Marguerite’s website – https://www.margueriterichards.com/
Marguerite’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/margueriterichards/?hl=en
Marguerite’s YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9ESu76fwhqn9_NRndQ2Eg
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“So here’s the question, the unconscious bias is not that, that you got a tendency to go for the, smaller dog in the fight. The question is whether you do it to glorify and validate yourself. In which case, you know, there’s no real pure energy involved in that. As some selfless Jesus like figure, who is willing to give his life to save humanity, because that’s what he wants to do.”
Cyrus Broacha is an Indian TV anchor, theatre personality, comedian, political satirist, columnist, podcaster and author.
He is also a prankster, best known for his show Bakra on MTV and his show The Week That Wasn’t on CNN News18.
He is also the host of #CyrusSays on IVMPodcasts which is one of the best podcasts of the country.
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“When I first heard the term unconscious biases, it actually had a negative connotation to me, as the word bias often does. But after some thought, I realised that unconscious biases are actually very natural. What separates us as humans is our ability to learn from our experiences, both good and bad. Now, like emotions, we have positive ones and negative ones, the problematic ones are the bad ones, like for example, anger. How do we deal with that negative emotion, we have to acknowledge it, we have to manage it.”
Sonia Dandona Hirdaramani had a career in finance, fashion and entertainment before pivoting to personal investing and non-profit work after her move from New York to Sri Lanka.
When she was working in entertainment and fashion, she was commended by Hillary Clinton for building bridges between South Asia and the USA
She currently lives in Sri Lanka with her husband and two young sons.
An occasional writer, Sonia writes a column, Island Life, Global Views, in the Daily Mirror, the English newspaper with the highest circulation in the country.
She also wrote a chapter for Anupam Kher’s best-selling book, “Your Best Day Is Today.” She is a graduate of Columbia University and completed a Harvard University Graduate Proseminar in Journalism.
Check out Sonia’s work here: https://linktr.ee/soniahird
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“And we have centuries worth of information at our hands and we really don’t find time to do the sort of work we should, as individuals, to make this world a more thoughtfully choreographed place rather than one where we have existing inequalities and the powerful manage to control media and the way we think. I think we have it all in our power to actually be more informed.”
Simone, a Bangladeshi-Brit, is an economist and photographer and grew up in North London in the 1970s.
Aged 5, Simone along with her family escaped from persecution during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war and moved to London.
She grew up in a fairly politicised family, her parents influenced by the left politics of the 1960s, and their activism grew with the movement to liberate Bangladesh.
She herself married a South African involved in SA’s liberation and has spent much of her working life working in the consensus building space with different stakeholders on economic policy, gender rights, climate and worker safety.
After the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh and the tragic death of over 1000 workers, Simone has been working with safety for workers in the global supply chains with some of the largest global brands and local industry.
She chaired BRAC UK for ten years, was on its global board and is now on the founding governance body of BRAC which is the world’s largest development NGO.
BRAC is ranked number 1 in the Top 100 NGOs for the last five years running – with scaled impact on health, education, livelihoods, gender rights and a trailblazer in eradicating extreme poverty.
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This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book credit!
“Feeling a heightened sense of my family being in peril really made me realise that a lot of what people were doing and saying and reacting to was based on a couple of things. One, a lack of experience with the groups or the cohorts that they were rallying against. And the second, being their only exposure to those people or concepts was through media, which is common through so many people’s lives. If you don’t have access to a specific culture or group or cohort, the little bit that you do becomes the whole, the totality of your perception of that group.”
Damion Taylor has spent the last 15 years applying data and technology to entertainment. Both analytical and creative, he brings a unique skill set that’s in high demand for brands and media companies.
However, being Black in media and technology, Damion has experienced first-hand the impact of pervasive unconscious biases.
Damion has now begun the journey of helping to bring those biases to light for himself and for others. He hosts a podcast : Professional Confessions.
Where to find Damion’s Podcast – https://shows.acast.com/Professional-Confession
The Professional Confessions Website – https://professionalconfession.com/
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This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book token!
“I don’t have to become British, I don’t have to become Japanese and I don’t have to put on a front or a mask in order to just exist. This is the centre in my body that gives me the validation that I need. That it’s fine to just be exactly who I am. And that changes day to day as well, there’s a fluidity to it.”
Kate Kinoshita is a writer, movement artist and mentor based in West Yorkshire.
She is of Japanese and white British descent and graduated from Oxford University in Chinese Studies.
Her chronic health conditions led her to explore ch’i-based movement practices in Taiwan, and to living and working in rural Japan.
She is interested in non-dual animist frameworks and the impact of colonialism upon the collective and individual soma.
Kate runs regular online group classes exploring meditative movement.
~ you can find details via her Instagram @_oakshine.
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Trigger warning to listeners. This episode deals with stories around abortion and racism that could be distressing to some listeners.
“Here’s an unconscious bias and a cognitive phenomenon.The human brain likes simple causality.So if a case got in front of a jury, the experience from talking to lots of people, including on long flights from one part of the country to another is that, if it comes out of your vagina, it must be your fault. The ability to think in any complexity about pregnancy doesn’t really seem to exist.”
Lynn Paltrow is an attorney and the founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a non-profit advocacy organization. NAPW works to ensure that no one is denied civil or human rights because of pregnancy or any outcome of pregnancy including birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.
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“There is a basic core principle of the work that I have done all these decades. It is the principle that nobody should be punished simply for what we put into our bodies. There is no legitimate basis in science, in medicine and ethics, the Bible, you name it, for distinguishing between or discriminating against people, based upon which substance they put in their body.”
Described by the American magazine Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.
He founded and directed first, The Lindesmith Center and then the Drug Policy Alliance from 1994 to 2017, during which time he and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana and advance other alternatives to the war on drugs.
Ethan currently hosts the leading podcast on all things drugs: PSYCHOACTIVE.
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“Forgiveness is quite different. First of all, we do it for ourselves. So, I had to get rid of the bias that I am doing it for somebody else. I am doing it for myself. I don’t want to be carrying around this anger inside me. It’s like a form of taking poison when we are angry with anybody. For a long time. I am not talking about just in the moment – for a long, long time. We keep telling ourselves a story about what they did and we are engaging in victim consciousness.”
This is part 2 of my podcast interview with Robin Shohet. Robin is a therapist, supervisor, trainer and author of the book he co-wrote with his wife:In Love with Supervision. Creating Transformative Conversations.
In the last episode, we discussed the idea of what unconscious bias meant to him. What is individual consciousness and how does this affect all the decisions we make? This interview can be found in Season 4, episode 3.
This time, Robin will share some stories of a more personal nature. His understanding of the word forgiveness and how that may affect his unconscious bias.
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“And then when my turn was there, I go to the stage, I realised that I couldn’t utter a single word. I was completely, like, nervous, and I couldn’t. I was stammering as you know, I was stammering , I was spitting. A lot of struggle was there. So the words were not coming out of my mouth. And everyone was simply – they were laughing. And when I saw some teachers, they were hiding their faces, but I could see them giggling as well. I was trembling, but I finished my speech, I didn’t give up. In that moment, that very moment, I decided that I’m going to become a leader.”
Puneet Singh Singhal was born and brought up in a slum called Sangam Vihar in South Delhi,India.
He grew up facing domestic violence and poverty. Due to his stammer, he also faced a lot of bullying.
Despite these early years, Puneet went on to complete his undergraduate degree in English Honours from the University of Delhi.
He then worked in the Royal Bank of Scotland as an operations Analyst in the Anti-Money Laundering Department.
After a year of working there, he realised that corporate life is not for him. He has since worked with organisations like Amnesty International, Action Aid India, Vision India Foundation and Association for democratic reforms.
He is a former member of the Delhi Minority Commission and a current member of International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
He is currently running a social organisation working towards normalising speech and communication disorders and advocating for a more inclusive and accessible society for people with disabilities.
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Season 5
“Even at that stage, I had no idea of autism. So I might go to the nursery, something as simple as driving a different route. And he would scream and be so distressed. I’d have to drag him out of the car and take him into the nursery. And hey wouldn’t understand why he was so upset. And everyone else would just go ‘Oh he’s two, he’s having a tantrum’. And those comments used to grate and eat me up inside. I think weirdly my unconscious bias, it’s a double edged sword, because part of my unconscious bias was going, you’re doing something wrong. But the other side was, I knew something wasn’t right as well. I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have the language or the knowledge to translate all these points he was struggling with.”
Matt Davis lives in London with his wife, Eliza and two children, Isaac and Tabitha.
13-year-old Isaac is autistic and was diagnosed with autism at age 3.
Matt writes a blog about this journey and shares his thoughts and feelings at mysonisaac.net
Matt is a Trustee of Autistica and Parent Patron and business ambassador for Ambitious About Autism.
He is also a partner at Red Brick Road, an advertising agency in London.
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“Women have not been allowed to move out of the house, or even have a professional carrier. Not at all, because that was according to the ruling system of Taliban. That led to a mentality being created unconsciously within me, that whenever I was thinking of a woman, there has been a word associated to that. And that word associated to women is the word ‘dependent’. And whenever I was thinking of being a woman, the first thing that I could think of was being an dependent individual, or a dependent human being. Who is fed by a man, who works day and night at home, but at the same time, is not rewarded like a man.”
At age 27, Hosna Jalil was the first woman appointed to a high Interior Ministry post in Afghanistan. She held the post of Deputy for Policy and Strategic Affairs and later Deputy for Women Affairs. Until the age of nine she lived under the Taliban regime, not being allowed to attend school. Despite this she went on to achieve a BA in Physics before completing a master’s degree in Business Management at the American University of Afghanistanan. Hosna is an independent, feminine, wandering soul.
“Even in our [Indian] education system, when we grow up, we are told these are the answers. Suddenly, you go abroad and study, and your faculty member asks you, what do you think? And the first thing that comes to your mind is like, what do you mean, what do I thin? You’re supposed to tell me what’s right. So when you get to this point in this profession, where there are no boundaries. You tend to start looking inwards. And you really start to question, what are the things that I value? What do I believe is right? And eventually, even your audience doesn’t matter. Because you present your truth. And what you’re saying is, this is what works for me, if you like it fine. If you don’t like it also fine, I respect that.”
Papa CJ is an award-winning, international stand-up comedian. He has performed over 2000 shows in over 25 countries. Forbes Magazine called him ‘the global face of Indian stand-up’ and Harvard Business Review called him ‘one of the most influential comedians around the world’. He has won awards for both Asia and India’s best stand-up comedian. He is also a motivational speaker and corporate training coach.
“So it’s this whole process of negotiating your identity. Who are you? When I came to New Zealand, I realised that I wasn’t quite as Indian as I thought I was. I had lots of friends who were international students from India, and I felt that I was, again, a little bit different from that. I had to then acknowledge the fact that growing up in Singapore means that had shaped my identity and who I was, as well. It’s actually when I moved here that I even acknowledged that which was quite a revelation for me. So this whole process of negotiating that, and then coming to a point in my life, where I thought, well, no, I’m not going to conform to something that people want.”
Priyanca Radhakrishnan is a Member of Parliament in the New Zealand Labour Party and a Minister of the Crown. Her portfolios include Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities. She is the first person of Indian origin to become a Minister in New Zealand.
Born in India, Priyanca went to school in Singapore, and then moved to New Zealand to further her education. She has spent her work life advocating on behalf of people whose voices are often unheard, including survivors of domestic violence, and exploited migrant workers. She strongly believes that everyone has the right to live with dignity – meaning equitable access to affordable housing, quality education and decent, secure work.
“I define myself as a local as a Muscovite and person with the Russian mentality. And my first language is Russian. But despite all this, people don’t perceive me as a local, much less as a Russian person. First of all, my appearance is not typical for a Russian person, also, my name and my religion. And every time I meet a new person, I feel like I have to prove that I speak language well, that I know this city and old traditions. And sometimes many people are simply surprised. They say how well you speak Russian, they compliment my Russian. It could be perhaps an example of a positive unconscious bias. And sometimes they think that I’m a liar, and some people could be just, frankly, rude to me.”
Safiya Yasmin Badzhva (pronounced Bajwa) is a 22-year-old marketing student from Moscow. She was born and raised in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. Safiya sees herself as 100% Muscovite, but her appearance doesn’t fit into the stereotypical image of a local Russian. Safiya feels that Moscow is getting more diverse, so it’s important to question the idea of xenophobia and racism in modern Russian society.
“I define myself as a local as a Muscovite and person with the Russian mentality. And my first language is Russian. But despite all this, people don’t perceive me as a local, much less as a Russian person. First of all, my appearance is not typical for a Russian person, also, my name and my religion. And every time I meet a new person, I feel like I have to prove that I speak language well, that I know this city and old traditions. And sometimes many people are simply surprised. They say how well you speak Russian, they compliment my Russian. It could be perhaps an example of a positive unconscious bias. And sometimes they think that I’m a liar, and some people could be just, frankly, rude to me.”
Safiya Yasmin Badzhva (pronounced Bajwa) is a 22-year-old marketing student from Moscow. She was born and raised in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. Safiya sees herself as 100% Muscovite, but her appearance doesn’t fit into the stereotypical image of a local Russian. Safiya feels that Moscow is getting more diverse, so it’s important to question the idea of xenophobia and racism in modern Russian society.
“For me, one of the many things that is most significant about being a person of colour, a brown person, having been brought up in the ‘70s, in an exclusively white English family, but in an almost exclusively white English context, is that the ideas and beliefs that I have gained and have been transmitted down through my parents, my grandparents, have influenced the way in which I think and behave. Not only towards people of colour, but to other people too.”
Nick Pendry identifies as a brown Indian man. He is married to a woman, and lives in southeast London with his two teenage children. Nick was adopted as a baby by a white English family. He is a social worker and family therapist, who has spent his entire working life in the public sector.
“I went to nursery school in the UK, but when I came back at the age of eight, I’d lost all my English. So the perception and the way you see a culture at that point is different. But I had my memories of that culture having had those younger years. One of the things that I find quite interesting is the way that you are viewed changes with the way that you are dressed. I grew up in Halifax, and my parents did what a lot of first generation migrants do which is desperately try and hold on to this culture that they had in their heads. So, if I was at home, I was dressed traditionally, if I was at school, I was dressed in my uniform, if I was with my friends, I was dressed in my jeans. And I have found that when people meet you, depending on how you are dressed, they will talk to you differently, they will relate to you differently.”
Syima Aslam is the founder and director of the Bradford Literature Festival (BLF), a 10-day literary and cultural celebration, which she established in 2014. The BLF welcomes more than 70,000 visitors to Bradford annually and is celebrated as the most socio-economically and ethnically diverse literary festival in the UK.
Under Syima’s directorship, the BLF has made a significant impact on the country’s literary landscape. It has been hailed as ‘one of the most innovative and inspirational festivals in the UK’, bringing together literature from all genres, promoting intercultural fluency, providing a platform for marginalised voices, and reflecting the changing face of contemporary Britain through a programme which celebrates diversity, empathy and artistic excellence.
Season 4
Amish is a diplomat, author and columnist. He is currently the Director of The Nehru Centre in London, the cultural wing of the Indian High Commission.
Amish has been listed among the 50 most powerful Indians by India Today magazine in 2019. Forbes India has regularly ranked Amish among the top 100 most influential celebrities in India. Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower Fellow, a prestigious American programme for outstanding leaders from around the world, in 2014.
Amish published his first book in 2010, and has written 9 books till date. His books have sold 5.5 million copies, and have been translated into 10 Indian and 9 international languages.
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Eliza Griswold, a contributing writer for the New Yorker, is a poet and journalist who was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for her book Amity and Prosperity. She’s a distinguished writer in residence at New York University and lives between New York and Philadelphia with her husband and son.
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Robin Shohet started his therapeutic career in 1976 working in a residential therapeutic community with people who had come out of psychiatric hospitals. He left in 1979 to work freelance as a therapist, supervisor and trainer. He is the author and editor of several books, the latest co-written with his wife, Joan, called In Love with Supervision: Creating Transformative Conversations. He is a student of A Course in Miracles, a book that has had a profound influence on his life.
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Jaishree Misra is an author of Indian origin living in Britain. She has written eight novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins. She has also written a non-fiction account of building a writer’s studio on the beach in her home state of Kerala, India. She is a postgraduate in English Literature from Kerala University and has two diplomas from the University of London, one in Broadcast Journalism and the other in Special Education. She has worked in special education, journalism and as a film classifier at the British Board of Film Classification. She lives in London with her husband and daughter. Her daughter, Rohini, is a woman with special needs and specific difficulties with language and communication.
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Indira Kaur Ahluwalia is an activist and entrepreneur turned advisor, coach, and now an author. She’s worked in federal government contracting, particularly international development, to build equity, accountability, and sustainability.
As Indira fulfilled her life’s passions and professional obligations, she was diagnosed with stage IV advanced breast cancer with bone metastasis at age 38. Her fight, and the lessons she learned, led her to write Fast Forward to Hope: Choosing to Build the Power of Self — a memoir to enable others to face and walk beyond their own issues.
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“When I came [to the UK], I realised in the last 16 years – it’s a gradual realisation of my own unconscious bias, of trying to be perfect. Trying to be this woman who puts on dinner at the right time, for everyone. But also who appears beautiful, intelligent, all those things. And only a few years ago, actually through the exposure of feminism movements here [in the UK]. I have began to ask myself why? Why do I want to be perfect? Is it because men want me to be like this? Or is this from my own standards? And where did this standards come from? So actually, from quite a few years back, my New Year’s resolution to myself has stayed the same. Try not to be perfect.”
Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the connections between landscape, ecology, identity and migration. She has specialised in conducting long-term projects that are demanding both physically and intellectually. For example, she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals for her Mother River project. Yan has published two photo books, ‘Mother River’ and ‘Forest’ with Hatje Cantz. She holds a PhD in Photography and lectures at the University of Huddersfield.
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“The fact that we have female body parts that are named after European men. This idea that the G-spot was named after Ernst Grafenberg in the 1950s, the Fallopian tubes, again named after a man, the Skene’s glands. And this is because the Europeans have done a very good job of documenting their findings, but they are new findings to them. They’ll document it, and then it’s disseminated across the board as if this is the standard for everyone to adopt. And anyone that that might have “discovered” this prior to the events are dismissed. So when I’ve written proposals for some sex journals about my research, about like, the Kunyaza tradition, and eastern Africa and their practises, they understand of sex and sexuality. Many times they don’t want to hear it unless I’m speaking about female genital mutilation”
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Helena Kennedy
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Season 3
“We were exactly the class which filled the Imperial hierarchy and could get a place in the East India Company or in the Raj Civil Service.
It was a guy called Dalrymple who ended up in the black hole of Calcutta in 1756. And so generations have been there one after another and like almost all the Brits, probably all the Brits whom I’d ever met, it was assumed that colonisation was an act of bringing civilisation to the poor benighted natives.”
William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards and prizes including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize to Thomas Cook travel Book Award, the SundayTimes young British writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuscinski and the Wolfson prize. He is also one of the co founders and co directors of the annual Jaipur Literary Festival.
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“What I’m saying is, is that because they’re not aware of their unconscious bias, they think they actually believe that what they’re doing is right. I mean, there are a lot of people who disagree with me, not just the people on the left or the right because many people refuse to recognise how complex racism is. People in the middle recognise that racism isn’t just black and white, it’s actually far more complex. And it reveals itself unconsciously, in all kinds of ways, both on the right and on the left. We tend to just think white people on the right are racist people and not people on the left as they are good. And I’m saying we should know what they’re doing is signalling virtue, they are not actually being virtuous.”
Katharine Birbalsingh is Headmistress and co-founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, London. Michaela is known for its tough-love behaviour systems, knowledge curriculum and teaching of kindness and gratitude. In 2017, OFSTED the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills graded the school as “Outstanding” in every category. “
Katharine read Philosophy & Modern Languages at The University of Oxford and has always taught in inner London. She has made numerous appearances on television and radio and has written for several UK publications. Katharine has written two books and edited a third…. and a fourth called The Power of Culture which has just been published. Whether you agree with Katharine or not, she will make you think. In the 2020 Birthday Honours, Katherine was appointed CBE.
Follow Katharine on Twitter: @Miss_Snuffy
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“I think these kids are so privileged. I knew that they were all going to third level education, they’re going to be doctors and engineers. Then I realised that the class structure was so profound and right from the very get go, where those kids would have been in, you know, local creches or play schools while the Traveller (indigenous ethnic group) kids were living on the other side of the road.”
Ken Mc Cue is a graduate of the International School of Politics and Culture, Moscow. He holds a Master of Philosophy Diploma in Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a PostGraduate Certificate in Cultural Planning from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Ken specialises in the area of Cultural Integration and Social Capital in Urban Regeneration. Ken is a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World and was officially declared an Atheist by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
In 1997, Ken co-founded Sports Against Racism Ireland SARI during the European Year against Racism. For more information check https://www.sari.ie/
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“We were told that everyone was butchered, was literally butchered on the way to India. Now supposing we were there, what would happen? I think it made me more resilient. Subconsciously, having escaped death at such close quarters and at such a young age. It allows me to be a little more cavalier in my approach to life. Not careless, but carefree.”
SP Rawal was born in 1940 to a rich landowner in what is today, Punjab, Pakistan. At the age of seven, he was forced to go through the trauma of India’s partition, travelling as part of a caravan of bullock carts, staying at a refugee camp, and doing all sorts of menial jobs. Today, aged 80 he’s the chairman of a leading brokerage firm, dealing in arbitration support both nationally and internationally.
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This is an extended two part episode. Part one is just under half an hour, followed by a brief segue into part two which is approximately twenty minutes. Please do listen to both!
“The other thing that was my unconscious bias, I’d always perceived myself as a strong woman. I am a strong woman and I’ve coped with some pretty significant adversity in my life with pragmatism and a degree of humanity. But this one stripped me not only of my humanity, it stripped me of my motherhood, it stripped me of me. And that was very, very surprising. And I have come to understand why it is.”
Kate Nicholls is the author of Under the Camelthorn Tree in which she shares her experiences of raising her five children in Botswana, living in a lion conservation camp, and home-schooling them. Kate is currently running a homeschool business in Rome and is passionate about integrated education. She is also writing her second book.
Content Warning. This episode deals with sexual abuse and sexual violence.
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“So you get respect when you are someone when you’re doing something, when you’re no one people forget you. They forget what you have done for them. They forget who you are, or they even forget what you have done in your past. So at that time, I learned that if I will not accept myself for who I am, if I will not respect myself for who I am, no one is going to do that. Because the world is very cruel. So you have to stand for yourself and you have to accept yourself for who you are.”
Naira Manzoor is from Kashmir currently living and working in Delhi. Naira says she is 24, feels like 65 but has the soul of a teenager. She loves books, deep talks, travel, singing, thinking and exploring life. Her life is focused around learning and she believes in being herself and refuses to change for anyone. Life is a journey, a taxing one and she says, I am up for it.
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“Let’s say now, you’re getting married. You’ve no relations to call on to come to your wedding. You’re aware of that at the time. Then when your first kid is born, you’ve nobody to ring up and tell – aunts, uncles or anybody. Nobody to ring up. You have plenty of friends, which is great. But you could always feel the other person had all the wives, uncles, aunts to ring up, whereas I had none of that. Now, I thought about it, but I didn’t let it get under my skin. Because if you allowed things like that to get under your skin, you’d be seriously affected. And I wouldn’t let it affect me, because I still knew I had to survive and get on with my life.”
Jude Hughes was born in Dublin in 1941, to an unmarried Irish woman and a black man. He was initially told his father was from Trinidad. He spent his early life in St. Patrick’s mother and baby home. The rest of Jude’s childhood was spent in institutions – first in a convent, and later in an industrial school, where he learned a trade. Growing up in Ireland, he rarely saw another black person.
Linked to Jude’s story is the recent report of Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, released on 12th January 2021. The 3,000-page report details the conduct and survivors of religious institutions in Ireland. These institutions housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage. Most relevant to Jude is the policy of the institutions preventing him from tracing his parents, or as Jude says, being told that the information was ‘redacted’. Ireland denies adopted people the legal right to their own information and files. The report is understood to chronicle many of the lies and obfuscations of priests, nuns and officials.
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“There still is an aspect of always having to come out, basically, because the status quo is that you’re straight. Therefore, in work and that kind of thing, there’s always a bit of friction there when you meet someone new who doesn’t know. You will end up telling them, you know, ‘at the weekend, what did you do?’. Oh, well, I was with my boyfriend or whatever. And there’s always going to be that, well, what are they gonna think about that? I mean, it’s not a problem, I suppose in the context of, British people, or Irish people nowadays. or anything like that. With people from countries where it’s not acceptable to be gay, I definitely do assign them. I’m maybe a little bit more worried. For example, in work if I had a colleague who was from somewhere where it’s not acceptable to be gay, to tell them about, you know what I did over the weekend with my boyfriend, because I may be a little bit more worried about what they might think.”
Seamus Beirne is 29 years old (30 next month). He lives in Oslo with his boyfriend. He works as a data analyst for a grocery delivery company.
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“And so, I was brought into this family, who already had two children. They were my parents’ biological children, two boys, very white. So, it was very interesting, when we would go out as a family. I would be stood there with classically sort of Pakistani colouring, you know, I have jet black hair. I have amazingly dark eyes, with my brothers and my parents who are blond and blue eyes. And it was, you know, it was quite amusing, really, because I could see people looking at us as a family, and questions going through their heads and said to say, what’s happened with the daughter, she looks a bit different.”
Anna Harrington grew up in the ’70s in a white, middle class area on the Pennines, an area juxtaposed to the multicultural population of Oldham. She is adopted and mixed race. She has both benefited from white privilege and experienced racism throughout her childhood. This has allowed her to viscerally recognise the effects of not fitting in and how the social environment influences behaviours. She now has her own business advising on how to enable employees to be productive and thrive through work.
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“And I walked away thinking, this kind of dominant view as a man, that if you have an encounter, that you have to kind of become this alpha male who’s gonna kick butt. Even though I spend a lot of work on myself trying to remove the idea that violence is the way to solve problems and so forth. That, in that challenge, I couldn’t just say to the guy, well, actually, given the choice, I’ll always sidestep an opportunity to engage in violence as the kind of dominant way in which people settle their disputes. I just defaulted back into that.”
Hári Sewell is founder and Director of HS Consultancy and is a former executive director of health and social care in the NHS. He is a writer and speaker in his specialist area of social justice, equalities and ethnicity, race and culture in mental health. Hári is honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and Specialist Guest Lecturer at University of Bradford. Hári has had various books, articles and book chapters published, with new material emerging regularly.
Hári has a reputation for being a strong communicator. He is a nationally and internationally recognised trainer on critical race theory, unconscious bias, leading diverse organisations and teams and issues of equality and social justice.
Hári worked with another local campaigner to secure services for survivors of sexual violence and currently runs a campaign “Men Supporting Women’s Rights” including “Men Against Rape”. He is increasingly studying forms of masculinity and the possibilities in practice and employee relations to recognise the intersections between masculinity and other aspects of identity.
www.hsconsultancy.org.uk
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“I didn’t write politically conscious songs or songs that talked about the skin colour of my first child. I didn’t write those things, saying, I’m going to change the world, and this is how I’m going to do it. I wrote those songs, because that’s the way that I felt, like everything that I do with my music. There’s not a disconnection, and it’s just a focus on ‘how can I market and get my music out’. I write my music the way that I feel. And that’s all it is. Because my music is an expression of how I feel as a distinction. It’s not a commodity to be packaged up. And that’s what was happening when I was 19, when ‘role model’ was put on me as a label. The media and the industry infrastructure were trying to craft me into the person that they thought that I should be because I was a brown woman, I was rapping writing my own songs.”
Teremoana Rapley currently works as a senior creative economy advisor for the local government cultural and economic development agency, Auckland Unlimited in New Zealand. She is a stalwart of the music industry as an award-winning singer songwriter. She stepped into the industry at the age of 14 with politically conscious rap group Upper Hutt Posse and was inducted into the country’s music hall of fame in 2018. She has worked in indigenous broadcast for over two decades gaining over 3000 production credits as an executive producer and many production roles. Teremoana has worked in a community action and development space for the past 30 years with her latest co-created social change initiative focussing on intergenerational and intercultural place-based community building using the arts as the connector.
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Season 2
Shashi Tharoor, author of 20 books, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, current Member of Parliament of Trivandrum, Kerala and my brother.
“You are different – your accent speaks of privilege. Foreign living and foreign exposure, and therefore you’re not authentically one of us is what some people think. Accent can be used to separate people from the person noticing the accent.”
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Dr. Ghida Ibrahim is a global citizen with many hats; a technologist, a data scientist, a tech for good entrepreneur, a community builder, a lecturer, a speaker who has appeared on TEDx, a World Economic Forum appointed domain expert and an occasional standup comedian.
“If you’re able to speak many languages, this means that you’re able to live many lives, or be immersed in many identities” “Be the best version of yourself and then the world will adjust to you eventually”.
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