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Agnieszka Pilat Apr 05, 2022

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Ep. 62: She went from poverty in communist-era Poland to becoming the artist of choice of Silicon Valley billionaires for her renaissance-inspired conceptual art of machines and robots/ Agnieszka Pilat, Conceptual Artist. Born in the shadow of communism, in the grip of poverty, in the cradle of post-industrial Central Poland, Agnieska Pilat acted on her burning desire to leave her homeland and headed to America in 2004. She landed in the Bay Area where a transformative book recommendation from her hairdresser, and her industrial roots in Poland, led to an epiphany which led her to start painting machines. First the traditional kind. Gears and widgets and meters and fire bells. Then — robots. One in particular, her big bright yellow 70 pound cybernetic “pet” if you could call it that / model/assistant/apprentice/Spot, on loan to her from the famed and controversial robot maker Boston Dynamics. Over the past decade, Agnieskza Pilat’s classically-trained, renaissance-inspired, contemporary art around man and machine, technology and automation has gained a big following among Silicon Valley’s elite billionaires. Her works of art have been acquired by collectors including Sotheby’s and tech titans such as Craig McCaw, Richard Branson, Yuri Milner, and Larry Silverstein among others. Several of her paintings are featured in the latest Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections. Pilat has been described as an “artist who brings technology to life,” ‘the darling of Silicon Valley,” and a “technology storyteller.” Her latest exhibition is titled Renaissance 2.0, and is an homage to Silicon Valley’s renaissance. It was such a pleasure to catch up with Agnieszka Pilat about her life and her renaissance-inspired contemporary art of man and machine.

Jerry White Mar 16, 2022

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Ep. 61 — He became a celebrated anti-landmine crusader after a horrific landmine accident but then began questioning his superhero narrative / Jerry White, Nobel Peace Laureate / Author / Professor of Practice, University of Virginia. In 1984, Jerry White went to Israel for his junior year, “study abroad” program at Hebrew University. On their spring break that April, White, and his two American roommates went out hiking in the Golan Heights in northern Israel, tracing the footsteps of Biblical prophets. They got off the beaten path to set up camp. One morning, White walked ahead of his friends and stepped on a landmine. He was just 20 years old. The tragedy of losing his right leg to a landmine transformed White into a student of resilience and survivorship and an advocate for landmine victims. He became a charismatic activist, who worked closely with Princess Diana, Queen Noor, Paul McCartney, and others to fight for a global ban on anti-personnel mines. White's high-impact campaigns in the wake of his landmine injury which cost him his right leg resulted in three major treaties, The Landmine Ban Treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Cluster Munitions Ban.. In 1997, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. White also served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, looking at data-driven outcomes in conflict negotiations. And he became a Senior Ashoka Fellow. But over time, White began to question his landmine survivor hero-narrative and dreamed of retiring his “landmine cape” as he likes to call it. His soul-searching on how that accident changed his relationship with nature and why that landmine came to be on that Israeli hill in the first place, has resulted in a prolific body of thinking, speaking, and writing. White has a new book out this November, called Religicide: Confronting the Roots of Anti-Religious Violence. The book is now available for pre-order on Amazon. White also wrote a 2004 book on resilience, titled, “I Will Not Be Broken.” Today, White is an award-winning teacher, activist, and leader. He currently serves as a Professor of Practice in Religion and Political Science at the University of Virginia and teaches the popular course: Religion, Violence, and Strategy: How to Stop Killing in the Name of God. My conversation with Jerry White about what happens when you dare to question your own narrative and when you lose touch with the earth was a profound experience and I am so glad to share it with you today.

James L. Jones Feb 22, 2022

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Ep. 60 — How history, geography, lineage, and duty converged to shape this retired four-star General’s decorated career / James L. Jones, Commandant, United States Marine Corps, Commander, United States European Command, Former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, & Chairman, Jones Group International. It was by no means pre-ordained but perhaps it was inevitable. Born in 1943, the son of a Marine in WWII, in a family of Marines, and spending his early childhood and formative years in France, inspired James L. Jones to join the United States Marines Corps, where he spent a distinguished four-decade career — retiring from the Marine Corps on February 1 as a decorated four-star general. It’s a real honor to speak with my guest this week, General James Jones, who during his military career, served as Commandant of the Marine Corps, Commander, United States European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Upon his retirement, Jones served as Chairman of the Congressional Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq and later as Special Envoy for Middle East security. President Barack Obama then invited Jones to serve as his National Security Advisor. In that capacity, Gen. Jones had the rare opportunity to see then-Prime Minister, now-President, Vladimir Putin, up close and personal. In this fascinating wide-ranging narrative, Jones describes how over breakfast with him and President Obama in July 2009, Putin shared his litany of grievances that Jones believes have shaped the Russian leader’s hostility and aggression towards NATO and towards Ukraine, with an imminent threat to invade that country, potentially triggering a global conflict. Jones now leads a global strategic advisory firm, Jones Group International, based here in the Washington DC area. I know you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did and will find it both highly informative and relevant given Putin’s potential invasion of Ukraine.

Braulio Rocha Jan 13, 2022

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Ep. 59 — A Portuguese Roman Catholic janitor and immigrant to Canada becomes the “Bar Mitzvah Photography king” of Montreal / Braulio Rocha, Photographer & Co-Founder, Rocha Studio. I thought it would be so nice to start the New Year with a heartwarming success story. This is the rags-to-riches journey of a Portuguese Roman Catholic immigrant to Canada named Braulio Rocha, who, just five years ago, was a humble janitor at the majestic Shaar Hashomayim Ashkananze synagogue, known affectionately to its congregants as “The Shaar.” But one day, Rocha, an amateur photographer, seized a rare opportunity to trade in his mop for a camera to shoot a bris when the real photographer was a no-show. It was one of the most consequential moments of a life filled with adversity. That bris led to other brises and bar mitzvahs. And today, Rocha has become the “Bar Mitzvah photography king of Montreal!” as proclaimed in this lovely recent New York Times profile. This is a story that transcends geography, culture, language, and religion. It’s a story of hope and above all, about second chances. I hope you enjoy it! And if you like this episode, you may enjoy my other photography episodes both on this podcast, When It Mattered, and my technology podcast, Techtopia, listed below. When It Mattered: Ep. 35 — A war photographer confronts her own mortality as she bears witness to the world’s worst wars / Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist. Ep. 12 — A brain cancer diagnosis leads a 27-year old mental health worker to use photography to help parents of critically ill children reconcile with death and dying / Caroline Catlin, writer, photographer. Techtopia: Ep. 18 — A War Photographer Assesses the Ramifications of the U.S. Pullout of Afghanistan / Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist.

Susan McPherson Oct 06, 2021

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Ep. 58 — A shocking loss leads a grieving daughter and budding communications leader to rethink the meaning of human connectivity / Susan McPherson, founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, and author, “The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships.” When Susan McPherson was 22 years old, her parents were on vacation in Puerto Rico when the unthinkable happened. It was New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1986. Her dad had dropped her mother off at the casino of what then was the Dupont Plaza hotel in San Juan. At 3:30 pm, three disgruntled employees of the hotel who were embroiled in a labor dispute with the owners, set fire to the hotel, killing nearly 100 people — including McPherson’s mother — and causing hundreds of injuries. It was the most catastrophic hotel fire in Puerto Rican history and the second deadliest fire in U.S. history. The three men who set the fire were brought to justice and received long jail sentences and there were big changes to hotel fire safety laws and protocols. But it was small comfort for McPherson, for whom the shocking loss of her mother was a profound moment of grief and transformation. I recently had the privilege of talking with McPherson about her amazing life story and how her parents inspired her to be who she is today. She is the founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, a communications consultancy focused on the intersection of brands and social impact. McPherson is a super-connector, angel investor, and corporate responsibility expert with 25+ years of experience in marketing, public relations, and sustainability communications. She’s a popular speaker and a regular contributor to high-profile business publications. McPherson also is the author of The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships — particularly relevant in today’s pandemic fueled anti-social world.

Peter Bergen Sep 07, 2021

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Ep. 57 — The Journalist and Author who Predicted the Rise of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda Examines the Legacy of the 9/11 Mastermind and the Global Jihad that he Spawned / Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst & Author, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” In 1983, a British university student named Peter Bergen traveled to Pakistan with two friends to make a documentary called Refugees of Faith, about the Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion of their country. Little did he know it at the time. But that trip would be the first of many and one of the most consequential in Bergen’s life. It led to a nearly four-decade body of work documenting the rise and fall of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, his group al Qaeda, and the global jihad they spawned, rooted in Afghanistan. Today, as we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and against the backdrop of the disastrous U.S. pull out of Afghanistan, I have as my guest, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen, here to reflect on bin Laden’s legacy. Bergen produced the first television interview of bin Laden in 1997, aired on CNN. And he was the only journalist to visit the Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound where bin Laden was killed, in a 2011 raid by U.S. Navy Seals. The building was later demolished. The author of nine books including six on bin Laden, Bergen has a fascinating new biography of the terrorist, titled, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden." The new biography is based on Bergen’s body of work, plus thousands of documents, journals, and other materials seized in the Abbottabad raid, along with hundreds of interviews — including with many in bin Laden’s inner circle. Using these documents, Bergen paints an intimate portrait of the terrorist in isolation in the final months, weeks, and days before he was killed by U.S. Navy Seals. In a 228-page family journal, bin Laden looks back on his global jihad revolution, concerned that his legacy and that of al Qaeda’s will be lost in the peaceful Arab Spring revolution in the Middle East. Bin Laden and his family worry that he had waited too long to speak and that he was becoming irrelevant. And he was worried about the al Qaeda brand being tarnished by the killings of Muslim civilians by groups such as ISIS. For these and more fascinating details about bin Laden’s final days, what Bergen calls, “bin Laden unplugged,” do tune in to this riveting episode.

J. Thomas Manger Sep 01, 2021

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Ep. 56 — A Retired Police Executive Returns to Duty to Help Rebuild the United States Capitol Police after the Violent January 6 Insurrection / J. Thomas Manger, USCP Chief of Police. After 42 years in policing, including for two of the largest police agencies in the National Capital Region, J. Thomas Manger had retired and was enjoying his life as a security consultant and public citizen. Then on January 6, thousands of white extremists — incited by former President Donald Trump and his minions — breached the U.S. Capitol, vandalizing the building and grounds, threatening the lives of members of Congress, of Vice President Mike Pence and his family, and mercilessly heckling, beaing, tear gassing, and injuring hundreds of ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered U.S. Capitol Police. Manger watched the events unfolding on TV, horrified and near tears as the rioters roamed freely across the Capitol, hanging nooses, taking selfies, shattering windows, breaking doors and assaulting cops, in a ruthless challenge to democracy. When Manger was invited to become the new police chief, he was reluctant to leave retirement behind. But haunted by the January 6 images, he couldn’t turn down the call of duty. Sworn in on July 23rd, Chief Manger is a little more than a month into his job and confronting some of the biggest challenges of his long and distinguished career. His 1800 rank and file sworn officers are still struggling to absorb and recover from the magnitude of those violent attacks. Hundreds are recovering from their injuries and are emotionally traumatized, scores have already left the force, and then there are the memories of two of their own who lost their lives to a stroke and to suicide after the insurrection. Put simply, many officers are experiencing a crisis of confidence in their leadership like never before. Can Tom Manger fix it?

Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich Jun 16, 2021

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Ep. 55 — A fighter pilot and great-granddaughter of a SciFi pioneer sees a UFO and connects with the vast community of UFO believers / Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, U.S. Navy (retired). Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich was going about her business this spring, getting ready to retire from active duty as one of the first female fighter pilots in the US. Then she got an unexpected feeler from 60 Minutes, the CBS television show. The U.S. Government was preparing to release a report on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs. Would Dietrich be willing to go on the show and talk about the strange sight that she and her four teammates had seen up in the air during a training mission back in 2004, the producer asked. Dietrich thought hard about it and decided that taxpayers needed to know more about the videos (now unclassified) that had been captured that day — videos that you all may have seen on the news over the past few weeks. That decision to go public and help remove the stigma associated with reporting strange sightings has put the introverted and media-shy Dietrich in the spotlight. It has also connected her to many UFO believers via social media - a strange spot for someone to be in for someone who is not a science fiction fan, despite a rich family history in science fiction writing. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: US Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich was going about her business this spring, getting ready to retire from active duty as one of the first female fighter pilots in the US. Then she got an unexpected feeler from 60 Minutes, the CBS television show. The US government was preparing to release a report on unidentified flying objects, or UFO's. Would Dietrich be willing to go on the show and talk about the strange site that she and her four teammates had seen up in the air during a training mission back in 2004? The 60 Minutes producer asked. Hello, everyone I'm Chitra Raghavan, and this is When it Mattered. Chitra Ragavan: Dietrich thought hard about it and decided that taxpayers needed to know more about the videos, now unclassified that had been captured that day, videos that you all may have seen on the news over the past few weeks. That decision to go public and help remove the stigma associated with reporting strange sightings, or inexplicable phenomena, has put the introverted and media shy Dietrich in the spotlight. It has also connected her to legions of UFO believers on social media, a rather strange spot for someone to be in who is not a science fiction fan, despite a rich family history in science fiction writing. Chitra Ragavan: Joining me is retired Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich. She served as an F/A-18F strike fighter pilot from the VFA-41 “Black Aces” of Lemoore, California. Dietrich retired from the US Navy after 20 years of service, having logged more than 1,250 hours and 375 carrier arrested landings. She served two combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Dietrich is now serving at the National Center for Atmospheric Research on their talent learning and development team, with a mission of science and service to society. Alex, welcome to When it Mattered. Alex Dietrich: Thank you. Chitra Ragavan: Why did you decide to join the Navy and become a fighter pilot? It's a rather non-traditional career, pretty formidable barriers and a daunting challenge, in addition to putting your life on the line in service of your country? Alex Dietrich: Well, I would say that I was a typical teenager. I went to an atypical high school, it was the Illinois Math and Science Academy, but I had the typical teenage angst, and I wanted to have fun, I wanted to have an adventure. And so when college counselors and teachers were asking me what I wanted to do, I had to declare a major for college and I had to take all of these standardized tests, I said, "Oh, I don't know what I want to study, and I don't really know what I want to do." I thought, well maybe I could have an adventure, maybe I could do something fun first and then settle down later in life, and so that's why I decided to pursue Naval aviation, and I did that through the NROTC scholarship at George Washington University, so four years of going and having a normal college experience, but also doing some summer training with the Navy, and some Naval science courses throughout the year. And then I graduated and commissioned in May of 2001, into the Navy. Chitra Ragavan: So your initial goals weren't all that lofty and ambitious. Alex Dietrich: No, not at all. Again, it was all about me and my selfish adventure, and wanting to do something cool and exciting while I was young and had the energy. Chitra Ragavan: But all of that changed on the day of your first flight, which also happened to be on 9/11. That must have been quite a day for you. Tell us a little bit about that. Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so I graduated, again, in May of 2001, and I headed down to the beach in Pensacola, Florida, which is where our ground school is. We call it aviation preflight indoctrination, API, and then from there I went to Corpus Christi Texas for flight school for our primary flight training, and just a little T34 turboprop planes. And we were just doing the initial, we call it a fam phase, or familiarization, when 9/11 happened. And obviously that was a huge shock to the country, to the world, but for me and my peers, it was a total paradigm shift. We realized that it wasn't about me and my selfish adventure, that I had raised my right hand and taken an oath of service, and service to something bigger than myself, and I needed to figure out what that meant, and how I was going to contribute in a meaningful way. Chitra Ragavan: That must have been an incredible change in your perspective. I want to go back a little bit in time, from before 9/11, when you were actually in flight school that summer, you were given a very unusual and interesting extra credit question in an otherwise boring FAA manual that you described to me a couple of days ago as a sleeping pill of a manual. What was that extra question that you were given? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so this was some interesting foreshadowing. So summer of 2001, in my initial ground school flight training, this flight rules and regulations course where they're teaching us about civilian airspace of how to stay out of trouble and not get a flight violation, there was an extra credit question that said, "What do you do if you see a UFO, how do you report it?" And my peers and I thought it was an absurd question, that it was silly, that it was a trick, but then when we opened up this thick FAR/AIM Manual, that's the FAA's flight rules and regulations manual, we opened it up and we said, huh, there actually is this page in here with this phone number to call when you see a UFO. And I thought, that's weird, that's cool, and also what a brilliant teaching technique that this instructor found this absurd little tidbit to include and serve as a hook to get us to actually open up the book and read through it. Chitra Ragavan: And I guess it became very relevant, which you probably didn't realize at the time, but fast forwarding to November 14th, 2004, that question actually became relevant to you and your team, there were four of you who were up in the air on a training mission. Tell us briefly what happened next, what did you see? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so we were launched and expecting to do this routine training mission off the coast of Southern California, when we were vectored to intercept a real-world contact that the USS Princeton, one of the other ships in our battle group, was picking up on their radar. And when we merged with it, we saw something weird in the water, some disturbance, and then we saw this weird flying Tic Tac shaped object that we engaged with, and it disappeared almost as fast and abruptly as it came into the picture. And we were shocked, we were confused, we were alarmed that we couldn't identify it visually, that the Princeton wasn't able to identify it from their radar. And then a follow on flight, a single aircraft with two people, was able to get some clear footage of it, but again, from that we weren't able to identify what it was, or how it was maneuvering the strange way that it was. Alex Dietrich: When we came back to the ship one of the first things I said was, "Does anybody have a copy of the FAR/AIM Manual? I need to find that page with that phone number to call to report a UFO." But the other aircraft in my flight, the lead aircraft, was my commanding officer, Commander Dave Fravor, and he was the skipper of the squadron, the most senior aviator in my chain of command, and so I didn't call a phone number or call the FAA directly, I deferred to him and his seniority in terms of reporting the incident up the chain of command, and taking any follow that would be appropriate. Chitra Ragavan: And so you all were pretty vocal about this, you were amazed and reported it, even though probably as a junior officer, you were probably a little concerned about, as you know, there's a lot of potential stigma associated with disclosing these kinds of things, and people are like, what is she talking about? What happened next, was this taken seriously? What was the next couple of steps that happened? Alex Dietrich: So I would say that we did an official debrief. We went to our intelligence officer, or intelligence team on the ship, and we gave them the information that we had. So in that respect it was taken seriously. Our colleagues, our friends, and the folks on the ship certainly teased us, and we had a good laugh about, again, the absurdity of the situation. We're certainly conditioned as Americans, or in our culture, with all of our movies and TV shows, to make fun of UFO's and people who see them....

John M. Barry May 19, 2021

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Ep. 54 — How writing a best-selling book on the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic positioned this author to become a prescient thought leader on the COVID-19 pandemic / John M. Barry, Author, Distinguished Scholar, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. John Barry remembers the exact moment he gave up his boyhood dream of doing medical research for his other boyhood dream of writing. He was 13 years old and had returned from summer camp eager to examine some bacteria cultures he had grown and left in the freezer, only to find them gone. Little did he know it at the time, but after a long detour away from his childhood love for medical research, Barry would write an award winning book on science and medicine called, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. The acclaimed book, which he dreaded writing because of its complexity, positioned Barry to give timely history, context and framing for the COVID-19 pandemic when it exploded on the world stage last year. The crisis of pandemics and how to deal with them would largely take over Barry's life. Don’t miss my fascinating conversation with John M. Barry, prize winning and New York Times bestselling author of six books, two of which, The Great Influenza and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, have pulled Barry into various policy advising roles with state, federal, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water related disasters, and risk communication. Barry is currently a distinguished scholar at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: John Barry remembers the exact moment he gave up his boyhood dream of doing medical research for his other boyhood dream of writing. He was 13 years old and had returned from summer camp eager to examine some bacteria cultures he had grown and left in the freezer, only to find it gone. Chitra Ragavan: Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups with strategic brand positioning and narrative. Little did he know it at the time, but after a long detour away from his childhood love for medical research, Barry would write an award-winning book on science and medicine called, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Chitra Ragavan: The acclaimed book positioned him to give timely history, context, and framing for the COVID-19 pandemic when it exploded on the world stage last year. The crisis of pandemics and how to deal with them would largely take over Barry's life. I'm joined now by John M. Barry, prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of six books, two of which, The Great Influenza and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, have pulled Barry into various policy advising roles with state, federal, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water related disasters, and risk communication. Chitra Ragavan: Barry is currently a distinguished scholar at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. John, welcome to the podcast. John M. Barry: Thanks for having me. Chitra Ragavan: You were pretty serious about medical research even when you were 11. How did that start? John M. Barry: I was just fascinated by it. I was one of those kids that had a lab in their home. I actually had a pretty good quality though ancient microscope. It had lights, lens, and things like that, an expensive microscope. Grew my own media, agar-agar, and all these dyes. I was playing with E. coli, which can kill you, but seemed pretty tame because I could use that in my school class. I figured if it was in school, it wasn't very exciting. I sent away to the American Bacteriological Supply House in Washington, DC. John M. Barry: I actually remember the company's name, it doesn't exist anymore, and asked for some staphylococcus aureus. Of course, today if you did that, you'd be all sorts of... Chitra Ragavan: You get a knock on the door from the FBI. John M. Barry: Yeah, they figured anybody who ask for it must be qualified to use, so they sent it to me. I had fun growing that and playing with it and so forth and so on and went away to camp. It came dehydrated in a vial. I hadn't used all of it. I put what was left in the freezer so that I could reconstitute my cultures when I returned from camp. When I came back, I opened the freezer and asked my parents, "Where's my staph?" They explained that their friend, a physician, a family physician, they had mentioned it to him and he said, "Are you nuts?" John M. Barry: He threw it out and then wrote a blistering letter to the company that had sent it to me so they'd never send me anything again. I was really furious. I'm still mad about it as a matter of fact. I was as angry as you can get when you're 13 years old, which is pretty, pretty angry. I had always been torn between a desire to write and a desire to do medical research. At that moment in time, I actually said, "Okay, I'm done with the research. I'm going to be a writer." John M. Barry: As you said in the introduction, eventually I did write about science, although I don't consider myself primarily a science writer. I have several books that are, I guess, fairly technical. Chitra Ragavan: But it would be a while before you fulfilled your dream of becoming a writer. You did history, I guess, in graduate school and then dropped out and became a football coach. First of all, why history? And then why did you drop out of college and start focusing on football? John M. Barry: Well, history is pretty easy. To answer both questions, it's pretty easy. I think history encompasses every field of both human endeavor and natural events. It seemed to be the best way to try to understand the world. In terms of football, I love the game. I wasn't very good at it as a player. I sat on the bench in college in a poor team in the Ivy League, so it wasn't exactly big time football. I was kind of frustrated by that experience. I didn't want to leave the game that way. John M. Barry: As you said, I did drop out of grad school in history. I was pursuing a PhD and did coach for a few years. I never intended to do that for the rest of my life. Chitra Ragavan: But it would lead you to writing because your first piece was sold to a coaching magazine and I guess you went from there to journalism, right? And then to writing your book. John M. Barry: Well, that's true. I wouldn't say exactly that it led me to writing. Actually the first three stories that I ever got published or paid for were all in a magazine called Scholastic Coach. One was about a system to change your blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage, one was maximizing the use of the tight end, and one was about off season training. I already was attempting to write. As you say, I did end up covering national politics and economic policy in Washington DC for not quite 10 years. John M. Barry: Left a job on a magazine to finish my first book, which was on politics called The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington, and then never went back to a regular job after that. Chitra Ragavan: Wow, that's amazing. What led you to write The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History? I mean, tell us briefly what the book is about and how you decided to write it? You weren't particularly interested in writing it in the beginning. John M. Barry: No, I actually planned to write a book on the homefront World War I culminating in the events of 1919, which I consider one of the most interesting years in American history. A lot of things happened in 1919 and during the war, of course. But the way I conceived that book, I thought it would take me at least seven years to write. I live entirely on my writing, which means an advance... If you say it all at once, the amount of money needed to live decently for seven years plus paid research expenses, that sounds like a lot of money. John M. Barry: That book idea I didn't think was going to generate that kind of an advance, so I thought I could write a book on the pandemic in at most two and a half years and probably less than that. It would subsidize the larger book. I got what's a pretty hefty advance for a book you could write in two years. Unfortunately, the influenza book ended up taking me seven years. The same amount of money divided by seven is a lot less than when it's divided by two. I was kind of looking at life like a graduate student almost. John M. Barry: I was pretty old to be doing that toward the end of that book. It was not a labor of love. At the beginning, for the first five and a half years, I wanted to throw the whole thing out practically every day and abandon it. But a character in the book, Oswald Avery, actually get me inspired, his persistence, and he's probably the single person most deserving of the Nobel Prize who never won it. He was being considered for the Nobel Prize for his lifelong contribution to immunology when he came out with the paper that said DNA carried the genetic code, which was extremely controversial at the time. John M. Barry: Since most people didn't believe that he was right, so they didn't give him the prize. Of course, he was right. In the book, I quote about five or six Nobel laureates including Jim Watson, Peter Medawar, Salvador Luria, Macfarlane Burnet, all saying Avery was key. He basically launched the entire field of molecular biology, but he never got the prize. At any rate, Avery struggled with that paper for 25 years trying to solve the problem, which ended up in that conclusion. And knowing what he went through,...

Asra Nomani Jan 27, 2021

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Ep.53 — A journalist upends her life and career to help identify and bring to justice the network of militants who murdered her friend and fellow correspondent at The Wall Street, Daniel Pearl / Asra Nomani, journalist, author, activist and co-founder, The Pearl Project. On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, Daniel Pearl, a correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, to return from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl's killers and help bring them to justice. In this riveting episode, Nomani describes how Pearl’s murder helped shape her as a journalist, author and a feminist Muslim. And she shares how the tragedy gave her the courage to become an activist challenging the rise of Islamic extremism and what she perceives as the dangerous influence of Islamists in American politics — particularly on the Democratic Party. Nomani also discusses why she is speaking up against the growing influence of “critical race theory,” both in the U.S. public school systems and on American society as a whole. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, The Wall Street Journal correspondent, Daniel Pearl to come back from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Danny Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl's killers and help bring them to justice. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory an advisory firm helping technology startups with strategic brand positioning and narrative. I'm joined now by Asra Nomani. She's a journalist, author, activist and co-founder of The Pearl Project, a 31,000 word award-winning global investigative journalism report identifying the network of militants who perpetrated the heinous. Asra, welcome to the podcast. Asra Nomani: Oh, thank you so much, Chitra. I feel like I'm with such a good dear friend going into one of the darkest moments of my life, but I hope we can share some light with everyone. Chitra Ragavan: It's been 19 years, almost exactly two days shy of that fateful day, January 23rd, 2002, when your world and that of Danny Pearl and his whole family turned upside down. Tell me when you found out that something had badly gone wrong. Asra Nomani: Well, that day began like any other day for journalists in, posting overseas. We all wakened, Danny and his wife Mariane were visiting a house that I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan. And Danny, went about the business of all his flurry of interviews he had planned for the day. I found a car for him and we stood outside this home that I'd rented and waved goodbye to Danny. And I said, "See you later, buddy," because it was just an interview like any other that we go off to do and then come back home and write down our notes and write our dispatches. But that night, Mariane kept calling and calling Danny's phone number and he never picked up. We just kept hearing this operator that said, "The call couldn't go through." Chitra Ragavan: And when did you realize something was wrong? Asra Nomani: So we had a dinner plan that night and we'd gone off to get all of the preparations. I had ordered beer because Danny enjoyed his beer. We'd called a bootlegger whose number I had gotten. And everybody had dinner, the folks that we had invited, but nobody was answering Danny's phone. He was never answering. So at 10:00 finally, Mariane and I went and sat in front of Danny's computer, went into his inbox, didn't password protective it. And there I saw the email from the young man who had set up the interview. That's when I just knew something was wrong because the email address was nobadmashi@yahoo.com. Chitra Ragavan: And why were you concerned by the email address, "nobadmashi?" Asra Nomani: So Chitra, you know your Bollywood movies? You know what a badmash is, right? Chitra Ragavan: A rascal? Asra Nomani: Yeah. A rascal. So why would anybody in their right mind write, norascal@yahoo.com as they're setting up a legit interview with a sheikh cleric? And I just knew that something was wrong because nobody would write that. The badmaash is the bad guy in every Bollywood movie. And I just felt and knew in my heart that Danny had walked into trouble. Chitra Ragavan: Now, you yourself were in a foreign land. You're also an American journalist. You are a writer working on a book project in Karachi. So when this crisis began to unfold, you yourself weren't really in a great position to know what to do and to respond. I mean, what did you do next and how did you even know what to do? What was that like, that moment? Asra Nomani: Oh my gosh. It was so clarifying. I wish for no one a January 23rd, 2002 moment, but that was the moment when I was trying to find every bit of courage and capacity and capability within myself to try to save Danny. And so, what I knew how to do as a journalist was investigate. So immediately I got on the phone with other journalists to find out if they knew who this Sheikh [Mubarak Ali] Gilani was that Danny was about to meet. I found out then that another journalist locally had gone missing. I called relatives that I have in Pakistan. I called sources. Asra Nomani: And through the night we worked at, called the consulate, called The Wall Street journal office. Did everything that's like old school reporting, called trusted people, called the neighbor, went over right next door to the neighbor when she awakened for the dawn prayer and begged people to help. And it was just a response like I never would have ever imagined. Everywhere I turned they said they couldn't get involved. Chitra Ragavan: Were they afraid? Asra Nomani: They were all afraid. And that was the moment when I really realized what happens in a society to the citizenry when you don't have a rule of law, when you can't trust the police, when you have an intelligence agency that you're afraid will come knocking on your door, they were all afraid to get involved. And finally, we got the police and two police officers came. A guy that we called Captain and then another police officer named "Dost", which means friend, as you might know, in Urdu. And so, we got them, the house was overrun with police officers and intelligence agents. Asra Nomani: And the other thing that I had to do, Chitra, that I bet you can connect with is, I was born in India and I was born into a script, right, for many women and many girls in our culture. When I was literally eight-years-old growing up, I went back to India and a cousin of mine had written into my autograph book "silence is golden" because we were to be good girls. Right? We were supposed to tow the line, don't challenge authority. And of course, I became a journalist and I learned how to raise questions. But in my own culture, I still thought that I had to tow the line. I got to wear my proper salwar kameez the long tunic and the baggy pants, wear my dupatta, the scarf over my head when I talked to the religious leaders. Asra Nomani: And at that moment, January 23rd, 2002, it was like all of the voices inside of my head that told me to be quiet or tow the line, just went out the window because I was laser-focused that I had to do everything that I possibly could to save Danny. And so, Mariane and I would joke, we had these boots that I had gotten to go hiking through Tora Bora to find Osama bin Laden. And every morning then I would lace up those boots, we called them our jihadi boots because we were on a jihad or a struggle for truth and for finding Danny. And there was no more compromise on my identity, no more second guessing myself, no voice within my head telling me to be quiet because I had to do everything strategically and intelligently to try to save Danny. Chitra Ragavan: So, all of your efforts though were unsuccessful, when did you find out his fate? Asra Nomani: Five weeks then into the search for Danny, all of a sudden I couldn't get any of the police officers or the U.S. Consulate officials that had been a phone call away, they'd all disappeared. And I just didn't know where they were so Mariane and I laced up our boots. We walked to my front door and that exact moment standing at the door, as I opened it were the Pakistani police officers and the U.S. Officials and the FBI agents. Asra Nomani: And Chitra, oh my gosh, these were grown men who would have seen the darkest of the dark. And they just stood there, just their faces is crestfallen, as if they had seen a ghost, as if they had seen the worst of the worst. And they had. That's the moment when this police officer named Captain looked at Mariane and said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't bring your Danny home." Chitra Ragavan: And what had they, had they seen the video? What was it that made them look like ghosts? Asra Nomani: So that night,...

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