WISE On Air

What can a prison cell teach us about education and leadership? 
 
In this episode of #WISEConversations, Syrian human rights advocate Omar Alshogre shares his experience surviving imprisonment as a teenager and how he and his fellow prisoners built an informal school they came to call the “University of Whispers”. Through poetry, shared knowledge, and human trust, he found a way to turn suffering into meaning, and reflects on why education today so often fails to inspire purpose, why passion matters more than structure, and what real #leadership looks like when it is tested under extreme pressure, always rooted in #humanvalues. 

Is #AI making us cognitively lazy, orjust outsourcing the boring parts?

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, Sam Meekings talks withDr. Spencer Striker, Professor of Digital Media Design at @NorthwesternUniversity in Qatar, about AI's role in education. They cover #cognitivedebt, the MIT study behind it, and how leaning on AI for hard thinking can leavestudents with little real work to show. The talk also touches on rethinking assessment, the rise of AI slop, and why taste and originality matter more than ever, before landing on the bigger question: what is higher education reallyfor, and how do we protect that as the tools around us keep changing?

What if the missing piece in your organization isn't more data, but a way to help everyone move like one body? 

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, host Aldo de Papp sits down with Paul Atfield, Data AI Lead at the Education Outcomes Fund, to unpack his new paper "Outcomes AI" and the idea he calls collective organizational intelligence, where AI keeps people connected to the same information rather than telling them what to do. 

ماذا لو لم تكن الحلقة المفقودة في مؤسستك مزيداً من البيانات، بل طريقة تجعل الجميع يتحركون كجسد واحد؟ 

في هذه الحلقة من برنامج "وايز على الهواء"، يستضيف ألدو دي باب بول أتفيلد، مسؤول الذكاء الاصطناعي والبيانات في صندوق نتائج التعليم، لمناقشة ورقته البحثية الجديدة "أوتكامز إيه آي" وفكرته حول الذكاء الجماعي المؤسسي، حيث يُبقي الذكاء الاصطناعي الجميع على اطلاع بالمعلومات نفسها بدلاً من أن يملي عليهم ما يفعلونه. 

In this episode: 

00:00:00 – Opening 
00:00:34 – Welcome to WISE On Air 
00:01:10 – How has WISE 12 been so far? 
00:02:04 – What's something you've heard here that stayed with you? 
00:04:30 – From trading floors to education, why the shift? 
00:08:14 – As a systems builder, what does AI mean to you? 
00:11:04 – Who should be reading Outcomes AI? 
00:12:53 – What is collective organizational intelligence? 
00:16:33 – Is AI sometimes just a genie for deep-rooted problems? 
00:19:06 – How accessible is AI, really? 
00:22:08 – What scenarios worry you most? 
00:24:54 – How do you compare outcomes across countries? 
00:26:30 – Audience Q&A: will AI end up in the driver's seat? 
00:29:43 – Where will we be with AI in 2 years? 
00:30:40 – Poll question and reflections 

What if the biggest barrier in education isn't a lack of resources or technology, but a failure to trust that children are intelligent? 

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, Dr. Abhijit Banerjee, MIT Professor of Economics, co-founder of J-PAL Poverty Action Lab, and winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, joins host Aurélio Amaral to explore what the evidence actually says about how children learn, and what stands in the way. 

ماذا لو لم يكن العائق الأكبر أمام التعليم هو نقص الموارد أو التكنولوجيا، بل الفشل في الثقة بأن الأطفال أذكياء؟ 

في هذه الحلقة من برنامج "وايز على الهواء"، ينضم الدكتور أبهيجيت بانيرجي، أستاذ الاقتصاد في معهد ماساتشوستس للتكنولوجيا، والمؤسس المشارك لمعمل عبد اللطيف جميل لمكافحة الفقر (J-PAL)، والحائز على جائزة نوبل في الاقتصاد لعام 2019، إلى المضيف أوريليو أمارال لاستكشاف ما تقوله الأدلة العلمية حقاً حول كيفية تعلم الأطفال، والعقبات التي تقف في طريق ذلك. 

In this episode: 

– Welcome to WISE On Air

 – What are randomized controlled trials and why do they matter? 

– Which widely believed teaching practices does the evidence disprove? 

– What can market kids teach us about how schools fail children? 

– The Uganda study: what happened when teachers learned to think? 

– How do you move from research findings to policy at scale? 

– Is AI making students more passive in the classroom? 

– What questions in education does Dr. Banerjee still want to explore? 

What does it take to raise an #AI that becomes a superhero for humanity, rather than its undoing?

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, recorded live at #WISE12 in Doha, Anousheh Ansari, CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation and the first female private space explorer, joins host Elias to explore which human capacities will matter most as machines take on more of our work, and why the questions we're afraid to ask may be the ones that shape our future the most.

In this episode:

00:00:20 – Welcome to WISE On Air

00:01:44 – What is XPRIZE and how does it shape innovation?

00:05:20 – How has seeing Earth from space changed your view of humanity?

00:08:40 – What is education's role in building a bigger-picture mindset?

00:10:40 – How do we avoid repeating social media's mistakes with AI?

00:14:28 – Do we have enough diversity at AI's design table?

00:18:58 – What does it mean to raise a superhero, not a supervillain?

00:21:37 – Is more computing power the wrong goal?

00:24:24 – Live poll: which skill will matter most in 10 years?

00:27:08 – What should education invest in for 2035?

00:30:11What gives you hope for the future?

Who decides what counts as #knowledge in the age of #edtech? 

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, Shahd Dauleh sits down with Dr. Taskeen Adam, whose research reveals how edtech platforms entering the Global South can carry hidden assumptions about language, pedagogy, and whose ways of knowing are legitimate. 

From the purpose of education itself to Big Tech's growing influence over how the world learns, this conversation asks what it takes to build platforms that liberate rather than colonize, and why some spaces of learning may be worth protecting from technology altogether. 

Chapters 

00:00:00 Introduction 

00:01:18 How does faith reshape what counts as true knowledge? 

00:09:18 What do we believe education is really for? 

00:12:22 The hidden assumptions inside edtech 

00:18:08 Is AI the next wave of digital neocolonialism? 

00:29:00 What can policymakers and educators do? 

What Can Education Learn from Healthcare's Quality Revolution? 

 
In this episode of #WISEOnAir, host Dr. Sunoor Verma, cardiothoracic surgeon and Director of Partnerships & Advocacy at WISH, speaks with Lord Darzi, Executive Chair of WISH, surgeon, policymaker, and author of the landmark NHS review High Quality Care for All, about what education can learn from healthcare’s quality revolution—focusing on effectiveness, safety, and the student experience. 

Chapters

00:00:04 - Introduction to Lord Darzy & WISE Summit Experience 

00:03:04 - The Imperative of Lifelong Learning in a Changing World 

00:07:06 - Quality, Transparency, and Accountability Across Sectors 

00:12:22 - Fostering Innovation and Overcoming Adoption Barriers 

00:22:58 - Cross-Sectoral Collaboration and Inspiring Future Generations 

What happens when more people can build—not just consume—technology?

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, Lady Mariéme Jamme, Founder of iamtheCODE, joins Selma Talha-Jebril, Director of Research and Policy at WISE, to explore the power of access in the digital age.

From coding to creation, the conversation looks at how marginalized communities are gaining agency through technology—and what this shift means for equity, self-determination, and the future of innovation.

What does learning actually look like inside the brain?

In this episode of #WISEOnAir, Stavros Yiannouka, CEO of WISE, speaks with Nicolas Namoradze—classical pianist, composer, and neuropsychology researcher who premiered the world's first "Neurorecital" at Verbier Festival in 2025.

Together, they explore what real-time brain imaging during musical performance can teach us about deep learning, practice, and what education might look like if it were designed around how the brain actually works.

As technology advances, the values that guide it matter more than ever. In this episode of #WISEOnAir, former WISE CEO Stavros Yiannouka joins author Laila Lalami to explore questions of surveillance, agency, and what responsible #innovation in learning should protect.The conversation reflects on how digital systems shape trust, autonomy, and decision-making—and why human values must remain at the core as #technology evolves.