The Mishal Husain Show

Peter Piot first encountered the Ebola virus in a laboratory in Antwerp in 1976. At the time, the pathogen was largely unknown. Now, almost 50 years later, a new outbreak is spreading through parts of Central Africa, triggering travel restrictions and quarantines across the globe.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Piot, one of the world's leading authorities on the disease, discusses why Ebola, while deadly, is not easily spread. The Belgian scientist also explains the challenge of controlling outbreaks in conflict zones and lessons the world still hasn’t learned from Covid-19.

06:44 - "No future in infectious diseases"
10:50 - How contagious is Ebola?
12:05 - “I'm not concerned that this will become a pandemic”
13:23 - Are travel restrictions necessary?
18:00 - “Ebola is not their only problem”
19:07 - How far are we from a vaccine for this Ebola strain?
22:14 - Tackling Ebola in 1976
23:48 - Tracking the virus
32:25 - Vaccine disinformation
33:18 - “Long Covid really exists”
34:18 - “I was scared to die”

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Ada Ferrer won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for her acclaimed book, Cuba: An American History, which examined the island’s relationship with the US.

Her latest work, Keeper of My Kin, tells her family story: a mother who fled the island nation carrying an infant daughter, while leaving a brother behind.

Now, as Donald Trump increases pressure on Cubans and their leaders, cutting off oil while  obtaining an indictment of Raul Castro for the 1996 shootdown of a small plane, Ferrer tells Mishal Husain about the human cost of Cuba’s long crisis.

03:26 - Writing “Keeper of my Kin”
04:09 - A love-hate relationship with Cuba
05:40 - The Cuba of Castro
07:11 - Leaving Cuba in 1963
08:13 - Leaving her brother Poly behind
12:08 - Letters from Poly
15:48 - Cuba’s history of migration
17:58 - Helping family in Cuba
22:50 - People in Cuba are “suffering”
24:01 - A threat to US national security?
26:51 - A shared experience with Rubio
32:19 - Cuban-Americans and Trump
34:04 Obama’s visit to Cuba
37:52 - Calling myself an American
39:52 - The books is a “testament of love”

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David Dimbleby was for decades the face of election programs on the BBC. He anchored coverage of 10 UK general elections, as well as the 1975 and 2016 referendums on European membership, the funeral of Princess Diana and a host of other royal and state occasions.

He’s seen prime ministers come and go, from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair and many more since. With Prime Minister Keir Starmer facing a potential leadership challenge, Dimbleby is uniquely placed to understand the characters and conflicts shaping Britain’s volatile politics today.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain he gives his take on Starmer, Andy Burnham and Nigel Farage.

0:03:15 Why so many prime ministers? 
0:09:14 Keir Starmer is a “dud” 
0:09:55 “I don’t know what (Burnham) stands for”
0:11:31 Would Burnham be a different PM? 
0:13:37 The UK is in a “dire state”
0:16:16 “I am worried about the future”
0:16:49 Nigel Farage as prime minister
0:21:35 Ten years on from Brexit 
0:24:31 The UK rejoining the EU
0:31:52 King Charles' state visit to the US
0:37:15 “I'm not in any way a republican”

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Beyond this week’s talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, there’s an epic tale that has been unfolding for decades. It’s a battle to be the world’s number one power and a much bigger story than the latest meeting of these two men. 

Kishore Mahbubani is a former Singaporean diplomat who served as president of the United Nations Security Council. For two decades, he has argued that the West fundamentally misunderstands the rise of China and its challenge to American supremacy.

Mahbubani. who eventually turned to academia, now specializes in governance and public policy. In this conversation with Mishal Husain, he traces the story behind the Xi-Trump talks, the handshakes and the social media posts–and what may lie ahead.

Mahbubani also reveals how his own successes were made possible by Singapore’s remarkable growth.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/Mishal

03:34 - “The most important contest of our time”
5:50  - “It's not about personalities”
6:26 - “China can no longer be stopped”
07:28 - US versus China: It’s a “zero-sum” game
08:40 - Bill Clinton’s first meeting with Jiang Zemin
12:35 - Cold War Comparisons
18:30 - Growing up in Singapore in the 1950s
19:53 - "My mother never cracked”
26:25 - “China has become a tiger”
30:24 - US war is a “gift” to China

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

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For a brief moment in 2017, Anthony Scaramucci became a unit of time. His 11-day stint as White House communications director was so short-lived that it entered the political lexicon.

Almost a decade on, he has proven more durable than the joke. The Trump loyalist-turned-critic, Wall Street financier and podcast host remains a well-known figure in American political culture.

Scaramucci is still holding forth on the US president he once backed, as well as bets that have shaped his own career, including on crypto and Sam Bankman-Fried.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Scaramucci talks about his early life, his mistakes and his view of the political landscape ahead of the midterm elections.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:00 - The midterms are “a longtime off”
06:58 - “I’m a loyalist”
08:35  - Who’s Trump’s successor?
08:55 - A president needs “name recognition”
11:41 - Meeting Trump for the first time
13:14 - Trump’s “phenomenal political instincts”
14:45 - Joining the Trump campaign
16:11 - “Donald Trump was talking to my Dad”
20:56 - Getting fired by Trump
24:16 - It was “humiliating”
25:56 - Meeting Sam Bankman-Fried
27:53 - “I made false assumptions”
31:18 - Bitcoin “I want to judge it over a five or 10 year period”
33:05 - Growing up on Long Island
35:17 - “The Mooch”
37:17 - The future of the Democrats
44:51 - History is a guide

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For more than 30 years, the Indian-born writer Amitav Ghosh has built a global following with novels that draw on deep historical research. 

But his latest offering, Ghost-Eye, is more esoteric. The plot moves back and forth between India and the US, using past lives to explore the ties between the personal and the political.

The plot centers on a psychiatrist treating a 3-year-old who shocks her family by insisting she remembers a past life in a fishing community.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ghosh explains why he’s finding it harder to write nowadays, how the memories of his childhood came flooding back during the Covid pandemic, why he sees capitalism as an obstacle to protecting the environment and thinks India has lost its way diplomatically. 

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:37 - “She had a near-death experience”
05:37 - Reincarnated past lives
08:05 - “The world has lost all its wonder”
08:28 - Growing up in Kolkata
10:56 - Kolkata and New York are the “opposite ends of the telescope”
11:44 - “I really learned to think against the grain”
12:13 - Creating a “bubble of tranquility” to write
12:32 - Writing from “within the crisis”
14:45 - India has lost its way diplomatically
16:25 - Watching Zohran Mamdani grow up
19:12 - India and China
23:11 - Writing a story to be read in 100 years
27:31 - Writing books by hand 

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

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We’re now eight weeks on from the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, a conflict that’s been watched with increasing alarm by Wendy Sherman, architect of the 2015 nuclear deal between the US and Iran and a former deputy secretary of state.

Having spent years across the table from Iranian officials, she sees a far more volatile landscape today. In this conversation with Mishal Husain, she shares how her concerns go beyond the Middle East and explains how China and Russia are beneficiaries of the war.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:13 - Iran’s “culture of resistance”
05:00 - “The regime now is more hardline”
05:33 - Iran won’t make concessions “easily” 
09:38 - Control of the Strait of Hormuz
10:36 - “They have not bombed away all of Iran’s knowledge”
14:35 - Negotiating with Iran
17:13 - Negotiations aren’t about trust
23:47 - What might a US deal with Iran look like?
25:14 - Iran will want the US “out of the Middle East”
29:10 - China is “stronger”
32:50 Trump’s visit to China
41:19 - “I have found myself angrier”

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A new and radical take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet is out in US cinemas. The force behind it is actor, writer, producer and musician Riz Ahmed. He says the 400-year-old story has never felt more current.

Ahmed, Oscar-nominated for Sound of Metal and star of the Oscar-winning live-action short The Long Goodbye, has a new series on Prime Video called Bait. It’s a black comedy about an actor on the cusp of a life-changing role as James Bond. 

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ahmed talks about creativity and politics, discusses his upcoming movie with Tom Cruise and how becoming a father affected his acting.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

02:32 - Hamlet “never goes out of fashion"
03:39 - “The old order is falling apart”
05:00 - “Is it the world that’s gone crazy or is it me?”
07:50 - The dream of playing Hamlet
09:51 - To be, or not to be is “misunderstood”
13:40 - “It's authentic. I'm not acting”
17:00 - Bait “it’s a very personal show”
17:24 - Why Barbara Broccoli said yes to using Bond
21:43 - Looking for acceptance
22:34 - “Culture works in cycles”
25:04 - Acting was an extension of real life
28:20 - “I don’t like being pinned down”
28:42 - SNL UK
30:01 - Working with Tom Cruise
32:21 - “My weekends are really simple”

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

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After almost six weeks of war, how did Pakistan manage to get the US and Iran to talk?

Amid a still-fragile situation in the Middle East, that question sits at the heart of this conversation with Maleeha Lodhi. She has served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, as well as to the UK and United Nations.

For her, the Islamabad talks mark a moment of wider significance, as the middle powers demonstrate their capacity to influence geopolitics.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

02:55 - Pakistan as a peacebroker
05:00 - Field Marshal Asim Munir and President Trump
07:49 - Pakistan and Iran
10:00 - Economic pain in Pakistan
13:40 - Israel and Lebanon
14:45 - “I'd like to be optimistic”
19:30 - US miscalculations
22:00 - “US dominance is fading”
23:00 Middle powers can “shape geopolitics”
23:53 - Is China a winner?
29:00 - Trump’s Board of Peace
29:50 - “Common ground can be found”

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

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Lionel Shriver has often tackled complex or contentious issues in her fiction. From school shootings in We Need to Talk About Kevin to economic collapse in The Mandibles. 

Her new novel, A Better Life, is the story of a family home taken over by outsiders. In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Shriver discusses the sociological concerns behind the story, which she says is a metaphor for the increase in undocumented US immigration during the Biden administration. 

Shriver is a regular columnist for The Spectator, a conservative UK magazine. The link between the writing styles in that publication and her novel also feature in this episode.

In the written version of this conversation, you’ll find more information on how Mishal Husain researched and prepared for this interview, including her own notes, data, historical context and further quotes from Lionel Shriver. www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

02:27 - Inspiration for A Better Life
03:39 - Extended adolescence
06:32 - A metaphor for America
10:21 - Shriver’s political journey
12:42 - Declining populations
17:02 - ICE tactics
20:34 - From North Carolina to Northern Ireland
22:57 - Rebelling against church
24:30 - Transgender debate
30:07 - Why Shriver left the UK
32:26 - Muslim immigration
35:32 - Novels versus columns
40:12 - Writing for shorter attention spans
41:30 - Shriver’s recovery from illness

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.