The Exploding Head

By Justina Poskeviciute

Is there anything that makes your head wanna explode? Any particular issue that bothers you? Any kind of injustice, disappointment, or negligence?

In this podcast, I take up the pretentious task of a... more

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FAQs about The Exploding Head:

How many episodes does The Exploding Head have?

The podcast currently has 75 episodes available.

The Exploding Head episodes:

October 05, 2022 Welcome to Season Three of The Exploding Head Podcast!
My podcast is back! There are still many things in this world that make my head wanna explode, there are still many things to deconstruct, educate ourselves about, and oftentimes unlearn.

Yet what happened as my podcast was resting? A short answer is a lot. A long answer includes the continuation of the war in Ukraine, imprisonment of Julian Assange, multiple elections in South America, protests in Iran, floods in Pakistan, and military occupation of Palestine.
These are the topics that I have written about as my podcast was resting (you can find all of them here: https://bit.ly/2XvgoNb) and some of them I will be covering in this upcoming season.

So thank you for being here, thank you for being curious and for caring.

Let's do this!

Justina
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3min
May 05, 2022 What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Palestine? Part 8: Erasure
Attacks on Palestinians have intensified during the holy month of Ramadan again – they resemble what we saw last year.
And the year before.
And the year before.
Thankfully, as I’m writing this, Gaza is not being bombed by Israel as intensely as last year. There were bombings, yes, but they haven’t turned into another war on Gaza – not that a complete siege is not devastating the people of Gaza every day.

I had already released seven episodes on Palestine – and a number of articles, which you can all see here – and, honestly, have been reposting a lot of this recently because the topics of my pieces are sadly still relevant: apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, media silence, etc.

But there is one overarching theme that came to mind recently. An exploding head moment if you will.

It’s something that I have partially covered but it’s time to cover it more directly. To have an episode on just that.

It’s the topic of erasure.

In my episode, I talk about the very beginning of that erasure – the creation of the state of Israel – as well as how erasure presents itself in the media, and how it seems to be at the core of the state-sponsored violence we have seen in Jerusalem: in raids and attacks on the worshipers in Al Aqsa.

Find more resources here: https://wp.me/pc6sQr-yO
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21min
April 10, 2022 When an Empire Offers You a Moral Compass, You Can Pass
I had written and spoken about it a lot but it’s time to phrase it more directly:
When an empire – the U.S. to be more specific – takes up a role of a moral compass, the liberator, the “benign superpower”, we know too much at this point to trust and follow it blindly.
That mistrust doesn’t come from any tendencies of paranoia, contempt for the West, or uncalled cynicism.

It comes from knowing how it has behaved in various regions, what world leaders it has been working with, what paramilitary groups training, what weapons using against what population, what regimes selling weapons so, what refugees rejecting, and so much more.

As the war in Ukraine has started, we have seen some absolutely hypocritical statements made by U.S. officials.

But they’re only hypocritical if we know a bit of the context here.

And when we do, we are much better equipped to construct our own moral compasses, without any help from the U.S.

This is what I illustrate and explain much better in my episode.

You can find all the resources here: https://wp.me/pc6sQr-xI
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26min
March 21, 2022 The War in Ukraine and Its Multiple “Yes, And”s (Part 2)
Can we talk about the war in Ukraine and its complexities without being shut down or accused of minimising its horrors?
I think that is possible indeed – yet not that easy.

In my two-part series, I address six topics, six “Yes, and” talking points that I have personally found difficult (but important) to navigate.

In my first episode, I talked about NATO expansion, the extreme right in Ukraine, and what we have to know about how sanctions work.

In my second episode (so this one!), I talk about (1) racism in the media, (2) the overtness of racist and xenophobic immigration policies when it comes to accepting refugees, and (3) the difference between what-about-ism and saying, “this, too” when it comes to the war in Ukraine.

I also quickly address several types of comments I had received about my previous episode and, hopefully, add more value to this one by doing so.

Find more information here: https://wp.me/pc6sQr-x7

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27min
March 13, 2022 The War in Ukraine and Its Multiple "Yes, And"s (Part 1)
Can we talk about the war in Ukraine and its complexities without being shut down or accused of minimising its horrors?
I think that is possible indeed – yet not that easy.

In my two-part series, I address six topics, six “Yes, and” talking points that I have personally found difficult (but important) to navigate.

In my first episode, I talk about (1) NATO expansion, (2) the extreme right in Ukraine, and (3) what we have to know about how sanctions work.

To the best of my abilities, I present the multiple “Yes, and” situations we might find ourselves in, what accusations we might get when we claim A, and how we explain that claiming A doesn’t automatically mean B.
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19min
February 15, 2022 What Do We Have To Know About The Frozen Afghan Funds?
What right does one country have to freeze the assets of another one?
What about when the country sanctioned is undergoing a major crisis?
These are the questions we have to ask about what the U.S. has been doing to Afghanistan which is in its biggest crisis in 20 years.

On top of that, the U.S. has been holding $7 billion of its assets in its banks.

How is that being done, what are aid agencies saying about it, and what is a strange (somewhere between absurd and criminal) move that Presiden Biden make recently regarding these funds?

It's all in my episode.

Please find more resources (articles, a video, and a petition to sign!) here: https://wp.me/pc6sQr-wa
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17min
February 03, 2022What Good Happened in 2021?
Almost exactly a year ago, I launched my podcast by asking what good happened in 2020.

A year later, I ask the same about 2021.

Needless to say, it was a turbulent year with a lot of suffering inflicted in countries like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, and others, just to name a few.

The uncertainty and deaths of COVID continued and we saw that, hey, a pandemic CAN last more than a year!

Yet if I was able to see the good in 2020, I thought surely there were things worth celebrating in 2021, too.

In my episode, I chose to talk about three things:
Barbados becoming an independent republic (I dive a little bit into political science and explain that a Head of State and a Head of Government is)

multiple elections in Latin America - and no military coups!

Elliot Page coming out as a trans man (you can listen to my episode on Why We Need Pride here).
Join me in this celebratory episode --- and we could use some positivity right now.
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16min
January 15, 2022 Privilege: What Makes Us Change? Part 3
If we allow ourselves to integrate the experiences we're having, how can that change where we think we are in the world?

And how is this political?

In the fourth part of my series on privilege, I take the liberty - and take my time, oh my - to tell you about my own privilege journey.

How the concept of privilege has changed throughout my life, what directions it took, what different regions have to do with it, and how it explains so much of what you're hearing in all of my podcast episodes.

It explains so much that this episode could have been an introductory episode exactly a year ago when I started this podcast.

Either way, I hope you find it valuable, I hope it changes something in you, and I hope you stick around for more episodes, now that you know where they're coming from.

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29min
December 20, 2021 Privilege: What Makes Us Change? Part 2
Can we inspect the very lens through which we see the world?

How can reflecting on the concept of privilege help us here?

In the third part of my series on privilege, three more people share their privilege stories.
Japan, Thailand, Scotland, Brazil, Lithuania, and Palestine are mentioned.

But it's not really about the places: it's about what the newly gained experience does to us.

I hope you enjoy and stick around for the last episode of this series where I myself share my own privilege story.
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19min
November 28, 2021 Privilege: What Makes Us Change? Part 1
What makes us change?
What changes the way we perceive the world and our place in it?
I find these questions fascinating.

And although privilege is not the only lens through which we see the world, I think it contains an important part of the answer to these questions.

That's why I'm very excited to present to you a mini-series on privilege where I ask people how the concept of privilege has changed throughout their lives.

In my introductory episode, I talked about the definition of privilege, what we should be conscious about so it doesn't freeze us in our political actions, and how we can discuss privilege without falling into the traps of what is called comparative suffering.

In this very episode, three people (full disclosure: three friends of mine, yes!) summarise their own privilege stories for you.

I hope you enjoy and stick around for upcoming episodes!
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21min

FAQs about The Exploding Head:

How many episodes does The Exploding Head have?

The podcast currently has 75 episodes available.