Citizen Reporter

Before there was youtube, twitter, or any other major platform for sharing video content, Ruud Elmendorp was producing content from the continent of Africa for the internet. His focus, then and now: everyday life.
With the onset of the global pandemic, Ruud is where he has been for the past two decades, trying to report on daily life from a region that doesn’t get the global headlines that North America and Europe do. Today on the podcast, Ruud Elmendorp joins us from Tanzania, to talk about life as a journalist in East Africa during corona times.

Videojournalist.nl

Ruud on Youtube

Ruud on Twitter

Note: Experimenting with Transcript Robots, today it is google and it is really not pretty. But, so it goes with experiments.

Mexico City is big, heavily populated, exciting, dangerous, and poluted thanks in part to all of the above. Along came a pandemic. Today on the podcast Lorena de la Parra takes us through her daily life and what she sees happening in CDMX, from the price of masks to the phenomenon that is López-Gatel. Listen and enjoy.

• Lorena de la Parra on Youtube
• López-Gatel Wikipedia
• Crash Landing on You IMDB

Tony Pierce talks to people for a living. They tell him about how life is these days, what jobs they do, what challenges they face, and what they make of the crazy world around them. As a longtime resident of LA and blogger extraordinaire, who better to hear from during a pandemic to learn how life is for Angelinos. We discuss things like how LA feels today, what is good about working from home in this crisis, and how people are coping in different communities. We also look back on our glorious past and how we got here internet-wise. Also safe places to park your plane or new car. Today on the podcast, we spend the hour with the great Tony Pierce!

• The Busblog
• Los Angeleno

During this time of Corona around the world, there are some stories you hear over and over; political manoeuvring, some scientific explanations, the occasional story about a medical worker in a well known metropolitan area. Then there are the stories you will rarely hear: about cities with less than 1 million people, about professions like librarians – who play an essential role in daily American society during non pandemic times. Today on the podcast we hear from my good friend Leanne Kubicz in Kansas City, Missouri; about her work as a librarian and what happens to her city and members of her community when a pandemic comes to town.

Hear more from Leanne on:

• Wrong Reel
• Zebras in America
• Pink Smoke
• In the Details

Fiona Krakenbürger knows her home town of Berlin under normal circumstances and now knows it during Covid19 times. Whats the difference? Today on the podcast we get into Berlin over the past weeks as well as uncovering what has been going on in DC over the past months (for her). Along the way we talk about Planet Money, sourdough, serious concerns for at-risk groups, hackerspaces, ultimate frisbee, and home office politics. Very pleased to have this podcast with Fiona to share with all of you. Have a listen!

• OctopusCitizen on Twitter
• Heart of Code
• Open Technology Fund
• Herman the German Friendship Cake

If you told me while I was visiting Mumbai some years ago, that in 2020 a city of 20 million people would have deserted streets and closed restaurants, I would have argued that such a thing is simply not possible. Yet here we are. Mumbai, like the rest of India, is self-isolating and battening down the hatches for what is sure to be a very difficult battle with Covid-19.

The award winning writer and journalist Dilip D’Souza is experiencing this hard-to-believe reality first hand from his living room, and he joins us today to talk about life, math, and other possibly virus inspired things to consider about humanity.

• Dilip’s latest piece, mentioned in this interview
• His Books
• And Wikipedia.

If you want to talk about decolonizing museums and other knowledge institutions in this world then you need to speak with those who preserve, produce, and pass on culture. In the fascinating and complex case of the Maasai and their engagement with museums in the UK, it is women who play an essential role in knowing about what an artifact is, how it is made, and why it is important. Despite this fact, in this growing global conversation, the voices we more often hear are male.

Today on the program we hear from two women of the Maasai, to learn about their role within communities as well as in the process of decolonizing the museums.

As always: Insight Share on Youtube and Twitter is where to see and hear more about the Maasai and other indigenous communities telling their own stories.

Jay Dedman joins me on the podcast today from his home in Western Virginia, where land is plentiful and incomes are on average a bit lower than in the big city. What is happening in rural America during this global emegency, what does he see and what can we decipher when comparing countries, cities, counties, leaders, culture… any and all of it. Also zombies.

• Shampoo and Booze
• Scavenger Life
• Luray Modern

Flashback to Jay, Ryanne and I at the biggest flea market in Amsterdam

As someone living with terminal cancer, Matthew Dons is not one who would panic in the face of a global pandemic. From his home in Tokyo he joins us on the podcast today to talk about what is happening in Japan, but also what it is like to be a person with a compromised immune system in the midst of the international corona virus crisis. Listen and enjoy and then go support his GoFundMe to help him continue to live.

Almost three years ago Samwel Nangiria paid a visit the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. While there he was presented with objects gathered from his culture around 100 years ago. To his shock the collection included items that should never be in the possession of a museum or out of the hands of specific members of the Maasai community. He would eventually express his feelings to the museum, and what follows has become a fascinating and at times emotional engagement to de-colonize museums and empower the Maasai to tell their own story of who they are as a living culture today.

Check out Maasai and other Participatory Video (PV) productions on Insight Share’s Youtube Channel.