22.33

This week: Getting to know a musician playing backyard quarantine concerts in his Washington, DC neighborhood.  An exclusive new song from Seth Glier.  A massive recommended reading list from all around the globe.  And more quarantine memes... 

Somehow it’s already our fifth installment of Connecting Through Isolation.  How did that happen?  This week: Inspirational and dramatic poems, original music, stories of perseverance, and how people of all faiths can come together around a common theme.  Plus our first installment of "Quarantine Memes" from our colleague Ana-Maria.

Graphic: Kate Furby / Photo credit: Alec Favale

With a bit of stir-craziness setting in, this week's stories remind us of the power of art to connect us and transport us, and the surprising power of flour, sugar, and eggs to bake away our isolation.  Have cupcakes ever seemed so profound? This week: stories from India, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Washington, DC, New York City, Virginia and, my home state, Minnesota. From teenagers in Afghanistan to a Parliamentarian in Europe, to an award-winning Midwestern chef.

Graphic: Kate Furby

Our third edition of a global conversation that shows how we are all in this together, so we're never alone. Stories this week about balancing the joys of springtime with the difficult realities of self-isolation, the vital importance of science at this moment, and a wonderful story of how the COVID-19 crisis might look through the lens of an almost-two-year-old. Stories from San Diego, CA; Holyoke, MA; Alexandria, VA, Washington, DC; Hideaway, TX; and rural Lithuania.

Graphic: Kate Furby / Photo credit: Nynne Schroder

The second edition of our new global conversation. We’re all alone, but we’re all alone together. As we navigate our collective new reality, stories are still coming in from around the world. More and more we see how things we might have taken for granted before, art, music, culture, even our own families, are supporting us through this.

This week we offer a small window into others’ lives, stories came in from Bangladesh and Libya, Oklahoma City and Baltimore.

No matter where you live, I hope you’re all staying as safe and healthy as you can.

The first of 22.33's special new series "Connecting Through Isolation," featuring self-recorded clips from 22.33 alumni from around the world who, separated though they may be, are together in social distancing.  In this episode, messages from three continents, original songs, and the sense that, even though we are apart, we are all very much together.  

This week's special bonus episode follows Sabrine Chengane, a Fulbright Scholar from Algeria, who, in the course of an exchange to the University of Nebraska to study public health, found herself at the front lines of the first COVID-19 cases in the United States. Her experiences, conducting research for the school's state-of-the-art quarantine facilities as it began admitting infected patients, were profound.

Note: This episode was produced before the global COVID-19 pandemic. We have temporarily paused conducting new 22.33 interviews, but will continue to air curated episodes into the foreseeable future.

Nighat Dad's trip from Pakistan to the United States was also your first time on an airplane. This led to some, well, awkward situations.  But ss a lawyer and digital rights activist, she paved the way for thousands of girls in Pakistan, including Malala, by educating them on safe cyber behavior. Through the Cyber Harassment Help Line, the first of its kind in Pakistan, Nighat fights for women's access to technology and promotes women's rights despite numerous challenges and threats.

Note: This episode was produced before the global COVID-19 pandemic.  We have temporarily paused conducting new 22.33 interviews, but will continue to air curated episodes into the foreseeable future.

What happens when you leave your comfort zone to move to another country and are forced to interact with a different culture, a new language, and unique ways of life you might not be used to. In this episode, we take a journey from Illinois to India with Benjamin Simington, a Fulbright student researcher who went to Carthage College in Varanasi. His research focused on Kabir, a medieval Indian mystic and poet, and he shares stories of 30 hour train ride through India solo, swimming in the Ganges, and trusting one's heart knowledge.

"Going to school in Soweto township meant that you had a lot of challenges. However, no challenge was greater than the day your math teacher stopped showing up and the students decided one by one that they no longer needed to be in class. So what did you do? You as a student decided to become the teacher. "