Spilling Chai

Hello My Dear Listeners! Welcome to Episode 2 of Season 2 of Spilling Chai, coming to you from Washington, DC. I’m your host, Anushay Hossain.

Today we have a very special episode for you because not only is our guest a fellow Bangladeshi woman, but when I think of fearless journalism, this is who I think of. I am talking about award-winning journalist and producer, Tania Rashid! Rashid’s work primarily focuses on human rights and women’s issues, and you have seen her amazing reporting on Al-Jazeera English, CNN International, PBS Newshour, NBC News, the National Geographic Channel, MIC, Channel 4UK, and Vice News.

Hello, My Dear Spilling Chai Listeners! How is everybody? We are so excited to be back with Season 2 after such a fantastic first season of the show. Thank you for giving “Spilling Chai” so much love and support! When we came up with the concept for “Spilling Chai,” it was meant to amplify #BrownGirlMagic, a hashtag that has really become a mantra in my life, and our guest today really embodies all the qualities of being a true badass woman of color. I am talking about Asha Rangappa-- lawyer, Senior Lecturer at Yale University, and a legal and national security analyst for CNN. Rangappa was also a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI specializing in counterintelligence investigations; assessing threats to national security, conducting classified investigations on suspected foreign agents, and performing undercover work.

Hello Spilling Chai, Listeners! Welcome to episode 14, the season finale of the show.

We hear so much about how the GOP under Trump is unrecognizable and basically just the party of Trump. But behind the spectacular rise of the political action committee the Lincoln Project, and their viral videos that mock everything from the president’s leadership to his intelligence to his patriotism, is a group of some of the most prominent Republican figures who call themselves “Never Trumpers.”

While the Lincoln Project aims its content at Republican voters whose support of Trump is wavering and Trump himself, the group is attracting millions of dollars from both Republican and Democrat donors. Lifelong Democrats are even organizing fundraisers for the Lincoln Project.

So does this super-PAC have the recipe to defeat Trump?

Hello, my Dear Listeners! Welcome to episode 13 of Spilling Chai.

When it comes to the issue of immigration, we hear so much about the “Dreamers.” But who are they and what do they dream of? Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is the program that protects Dreamers, young, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children and grew up here, from being deported.

Early this summer, in two separate cases, the US Supreme Court and a federal appeals court, both ruled that the Trump administration was unjustified in ending an Obama-era program that temporarily halts deportations for hundreds of thousands of “dreamers.” Not surprisingly, the current brazenly anti-immigration administration has refused to comply.

Hello, My Dear listeners! How are you? Welcome to episode 12 of the show, coming to you from Washington, DC on this blistering, corona-raging summer day. Be honest-- when you think of a country music-loving, Republican man, chances are you picture a white male. But our guest today not only breaks outdated stereotypes, but also broke with the Republican party and became a Democrat. 

I am talking about Project Lincoln Senior Advisor, Kurt Bardella. Bardella is a former Congressional spokesman who is an MSNBC contributor to Morning Joe. He’s also a contributing writer for USA Today, and the creator and publisher of the country music industry publication, Morning Hangover. And he joins us today on Spilling Chai!

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s brutal murder at the hands of the police, a racial reckoning spread across the country which is frankly still going strong. But another reckoning is taking place in America’s newsrooms, calling out the media industry for how it contributes to a racist culture that renders Black journalists voiceless. Frankly, most people of color in the media can relate.

Well, one journalist is taking a leading role in confronting outdated newsroom norms. I am talking about Wesley Lowery. Lowery is a journalist at CBS News, formerly with The Washington Post. He was a lead on the Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement. 

After becoming a CNN political contributor in 2017, this year Lowery was announced as a correspondent for 60 in 6, a short-form spinoff of 60 Minutes for Quibi, and he joins us today on “Spilling Chai.”

Hello Everyone! Welcome to episode 10 of Spilling Chai. I would normally check-in and ask how everybody is doing, but as Corona rages across America and the world, (but really, America since we do have the highest number of cases), aren’t we all kind of living in the same uncertain-freefall-pandemic reality?

Well, today’s show gives you a much-needed break from all things Corona as we discuss two of my favorite subjects--politics and journalism.

And for those of you who say I’m hard on white men and always insulting them, I present to you my guest today-- iconic American political journalist, David Corn, who also happens to be one of my favorite white men. If you're not following him on Twitter, you are missing out.

Hi Everyone! Welcome to Episode 8 of Spilling Chai coming to you from the capital of a nation on fire-- figuratively and literally. It feels like the America I once knew-- or thought I knew-- is vanishing before my eyes. It is a nation divided over race, paralyzed by a global pandemic; the economy is in ruins, millions are unemployed, and as protests continue across the country, America’s racial wounds and roots lay exposed for all to see. How do we move forward after the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police? Is America coming together or falling apart?

Hello, My Dear Listeners! Welcome to episode 7 of Spilling Chai. Like so many people that grew up outside of America, American TV shows and movies made up such a big part of my childhood, so this idea about America being all about law and order, and justice, and the bad guys vs the good guys, and legal systems that work was something that was so ingrained in me from what I watched and saw on screen. The message was clear-- no one in America is above the law. I really believed that once. Well, all that went to hell with Trump. Can we even count the ways this man has rendered the American system of checks, balances, accountability, and the whole concept of no one being above the law, to oblivion?