Menstruation is normal — so why is it still taboo to talk about in some parts of the world? Nelufar has a heart-to-heart with her childhood friends about period stigma. Then she talks with Mandu Reid, the leader of the British Women’s Equality Party and founder of the Cup Effect, an organization that offers menstrual cups to people in need. Read the episode transcript here.

Artificial intelligence has as much racial and gender bias as the people who create it. Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist and digital activist at the MIT Media Lab, talks with host Nelufar Hedayat about how to build artificial intelligence systems that don’t perpetuate social inequalities. Read the episode transcript here.

Your phone is tracking you all the time. Tech companies are monetizing your personal data. Is there anything that you can do about it? Nelufar talks to Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about why data privacy should be a human right. Then we discover some surprising ways social media ad targeting is being used to do good in the world. Read the episode transcript here.

The public’s trust in governments is at an all-time low. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein is a veteran diplomat and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He talks with host Nelufar Hedayat about standing up to governments — and the enemies he made along the way. Read the episode transcript here.

As the coronavirus rages, 89 percent of students around the world are out of school and turning to online platforms to keep studying. That has its limits and its own set of challenges, but it’s far better than no school at all. Nelufar speaks with Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, about internet inequality and the future of education in a post COVID-19 world. Read the episode transcript here.

While confronting a friend who voted for Brexit, Nelufar goes on an ego-dampening journey that takes her from a conflict circle in Iraq to a prison in southern Illinois, as she learns why conflict resolution is more about confronting ourselves than others. Read the episode transcript here.

What do our decisions about COVID-19 say about who we are as societies and the systems we take for granted? This week, we chat with global strategy expert Parag Khanna and anthropologist Jason Hickel about the novel coronavirus, the global economy and the institutions we must trust to get us through this. Read the episode transcript here.

How do we solve a problem that has displaced 25 million people globally? Nelufar talks to journalist Marc Lamont Hill about the role racism plays in the global refugee crisis. Read the episode transcript here.

Nelufar gets an unpleasant surprise when she finds out how much carbon she’s personally responsible for emitting into the atmosphere. But even if we all work to reduce our carbon footprint, will it be enough to fix the climate crisis? Or does real change have to come from the top? Read the episode transcript here.

The gap between rich and poor is widening at an unsustainable rate. Author Anand Giridharadas says that to really change the world, we need to challenge capitalist power structures. Read the episode transcript here.