this week's podcast: Masarat Daud in "I Am Not Responsible for Your Ignorance" (Patreon)

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hallo loves.

this week's guest is incredible. it's masarat daud, who i met after seeing her give a TED talk about division, tolerance and feminism. she's a smart-ass, and a riot, and lover of compassion. her latest TED talk is called "you're oppressed, but you don't know it yet."

her twitter bio states: 

"In my oppressive burqa, I travel, talk, cycle and bake."

you gotta love this woman.

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first up, real life.

we can't skip it.

greetings from auckland, where i am looking at the world through a psychedelic kiwi telescope, and shit just feels.....incredibly fucked right now.

i mean, it's been feeling fucked for ages. but it feels especially fucked this week. (i am praying with bended eyeballs that the georgia election goes okay. i'll go to bed dreaming of sheep and the democrats taking back the senate.)

but man.

the UK and other parts of the world going back into full lockdown. to my many friends and patrons in the UK, i'm sending strength. 

my friends in the states just sound exhausted. there's a weariness i can't even measure anymore.

i just texted my friend: i am trying to understand, trying to use my imagination, trying, trying, and i've been out of lockdown for so long that i can't wrap my head around what my loved ones are going through. i cannot stop trying, and i never look at ash sharing an ice cream with a little kid he's just met, or get a coffee in a coffee shop served by a barista without a mask, or hug a person i just met at a party, without thinking 

"this isn't happening at home. this isn't happening at home. this isn't happening at home."

in the last 48 hours alone, i have listened to the president of the united states of america blatantly piss all over the idea of constitutional democracy....

....i have seen a video clip of a speaker at a pro-trump rally asking people to hug each other while shouting "MASS SPREADER EVENT" ....

....and on a new level of surreal, there was this news. 

i mean....

after the year i had on the road telling my many abortion stories, this hit harder than just seeing the horrifying news about clinics across america being slowly but surely shuttered, and access more and more restricted.

would you like to cremate or bury your fetal tissue? 

your miscarriage?

your country?

what a choice.

speaking of pro-choice, you gotta go all in.

i have had all sorts of feelings about CHOICE.

and strangely, the idea of whether or not you should judge a person having an abortion (or not having an abortion) is a strange cousin to the idea of whether or not you should judge a person for wearing a burka (or not wearing one).

it gets muddy fast, doesn't it?

......................

i want you to listen to this podcast. i mean, i want you to listen to all of them....but this one feels aptly timed for the degree of intolerance, canceling and lack of compassion in the atmosphere right now.

Here's what I put up on the website:

We had little to do in 2021 but contemplate our connections. To our planet, to our lives and most importantly, to the flesh-and-blood humans who surround us. And yet with every day that passes, the spaces we inhabit feel increasingly intolerant and hostile, progress towards a more inclusive, thoughtful world crushed beneath the weight of internet-yellings and fake news-wars.

My guest this week, TEDx curator and education activist Masarat Daud, has dealt with the consequences of exclusion on the basis of her appearance since she began wearing a burqa at 17...and she has much, much, much to teach us about the way our judgements and biases form, manifest and harm others. We talked about everything from how to flip expressions of hatred into resilience to the casual removal of agency by the feminist who told her ‘you’re oppressed but you don’t know it yet’. Ooh boy.

There’s never been a better time to stop and reflect how we look at the world, at other people and wonder whether we ourselves could be more compassionate - and more willing to embrace difference - than we imagined. I hope you find this conversation (and Masarat’s penguin headscarf) as enlightening as I did. Enjoy!

from left to right in london, our engineer christo squier, masarat, and yours truly.

let's PONDER THAT....

photos by christo.

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Here we go:

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST and SHARE it, please!...audio for all of the podcast episodes are embedded on my website, including today's episode:

http://amandapalmer.net/podcast

OR....

go here, select the podcast venue of your choice (i.e. apple podcasts), and click on the most recent episode.

https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

FREE....BECAUSE PATRONAGE!

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WAIT - HOW DO I LISTEN?

this handy linktree has a round-up of how to tune into the podcast on some of the most popular players. we will have the audio embedded on each episode post on my website: http://amandapalmer.net/podcast

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FURTHER DISCUSSION.....

i OFFICIALLY renamed the patron-only "podcast book club" thread on the shadowbox discussion forum, since we have been going so much wider than BOOKS. it's now called the "patron-only podcast discussion". boring, i know. got any better ideas?

as you know, the commenting system on these posts is annoying, and the box is a way better place to hold discussions, so i'd love you to head over there for some robust chat about what you think and feel after listening to the podcast:

here you go, and don't forget, it's patron-only, so the public can never access it:

the link:

https://forum.theshadowbox.net/t/burka-no-burka-talka/6559

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MORE ABOUT MASARAT DAUD & show notes for this episode:

Masarat Daud is an alumnus of Cambridge International School, Dubai. She later studied at the American University of Dubai and also completed a certificate course in Tech Tools and Skills in Emergency Management through TechChange.

Masarat is the Founder of 8 Day Academy, a global education movement with a mission to make education accessible and relevant to all communities. She has also worked as a columnist for the Khaleej Times and as Deputy News Editor for CPI Dubai.

She is the curator of TEDx Shekhavati; a conference that takes place in rural Rajasthan. In her TEDx talks, she discusses how to break stereotypes and how she learned to love her burka.

In this episode we talk about the importance of stoking your curiosity about people different from you, the power of core values to bring people together, keeping a world view of abundance, Masarat’s dinners with Twitter friends, the cult of feminism, the importance of visibility and taking up space, nudity, and not taking responsibility for other people’s ignorance.

Twitter:
@masarat 

TED:
"why i wear the burka": https://blog.ted.com/why-i-wear-the-burka-masarat-daud-at-ted2014/

"you're oppressed, but you don't know it yet:"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvX_eJtEbtI

8 Day Academy:
https://www.facebook.com/8dayacademy/timeline

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PODCAST CREDITS:

Thanks obviously to my guest, Masarat Daud. You should go and watch her TED talk, which is called How I Came To Love My Burqa. It’s really good.

The engineer for this interview was Christo Squier. For all the music that you heard in this podcast, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast.

Lots of thanks to my team. Hayley Rosenblum, who makes so many things possible in the background, thank you so much, Hayley. Also my assistant Michael McComiskey, who helps me run my entire life, and makes sure all the trains run on time. Also in London, my Merch Queen Alex, who’s helping us transcribe these podcasts, so the conversations can be accessible to everyone. My new team member Kelly Welles, who’s helping out with social media and all sorts of other stuff in the imaging department. And of course, my manager Jordan Verzar in Sydney, who’s bringing everyone and everything together all the time.

Last but not least, this whole undertaking, this whole podcast, would not be possible without all of my patrons. At current count, we’ve got about 14,000 to 15,000 people, and everyone’s contributing a little bit of money to make sure that this podcast has no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit. Just the media that we want to put out into the world.

So many special thanks too to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Robert W. Perkins, and Leela Cosgrove. Thank you guys so much for helping me do this.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

we've attached a pdf of the transcript of the podcast the patreon post. to view it, you can download it by visiting this patreon post on the web

(it's a hyperlink at the very bottom of the post with a little paper clip attachment symbol next to it)

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THANK YOU TO ALL YOU PATRONS, FOR SUPPORTING THIS PODCAST.

because of you, as usual:

No ads. No sponsors. No censorship.

We. Are. The. Media.

i love you all.

hang in there. 

let me know you're doing in the comments. i'm getting a little more time and i'm readin'.

x

a

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

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