When it Mattered

Ep. 72 — She went from a childhood filled with fears to becoming a fearless stunt performer and wilderness adventurer / Alice Ford, stunt actor and producer/host of “Alice’s Adventures.” Alice Ford has HAD a long and evolving relationship with fear. An all-star gymnast, athlete, track and field runner, and diver, Ford’s life path came to a dead-end one day after she gave up her prestigious athletic scholarship from the University of Vermont and moved to the University of Arizona, to escape the cold. But instead, she wound up getting a whole lot of heat from some members of a drug cartel (tied to her then-boyfriend, who was dealing drugs) who ransacked her home one day but left her and her dog unharmed. It took that incident and several other wake-ups call to get her life on track and get back in touch with her athleticism and gymnastics roots to build a successful career in the world of stunt acting and get back in touch with her love of nature. Today, Ford is one of the industry’s most up-and-coming female leads, working with directors such as Michael Bey in action-packed movies including “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” and Star Wars, suffering numerous injuries and concussions in the course of her work, which was one factor along with her love of nature, in building a parallel career track as a wildlife adventurer. Ford is producing and starring in a television series, “Alice Ford’s: World Heritage Adventures.” And she also stars in her own YouTube channel called “Alice Ford Adventures,” where she hosts travel videos from her many hikes and climbs around the globe, bringing her full circle in her evolving relationship with both fear and nature. Thanks for listening! Subscribe: https://bit.ly/ChitraRagavanChannel 👍 Please Subscribe and give a Thumbs Up! 👂Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Amazon Music: 🎙️When it Mattered: https://lnk.to/whenitmattered 🎙️Techtopia: https://lnk.to/techtopia Connect with Chitra Ragavan at: 🌐 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chitrarag... 🌐 Twitter – https://twitter.com/chitra_ragavan 🌐 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/chitra_ragavan 🌐 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/chitra.ragav…   Other Helpful Links: ✍️ SWAAY: https://swaay.com/primed-for-pain-how… 🌐 Website: https://goodstory.io 🌐 Website: https://chitraragavan.com   If you liked this episode, do check out these other episodes: Ep. 68. He survived a near-fatal shooting by ex-wife-hired-hitman / Garrett Warren, Stunt Actor/Director Ep. 69. A battered cop proves her mettle during the Jan. 6th riots / Officer Caroline Edwards, USCP Ep. 67. He built a successful startup while battling bipolar disorder / Andy Dunn, Author, “Burn Rate” Ep. 65. Mexican gangsters faked avocado purchase to launder ransom payment / Patrick Struebi, Fairtrasa Ep. 63. Held hostage by drug lord reveals the best and worst of humanity / Francisco Santos Calderón Ep. 61. Heroism, activism, reconciliation with nature / Jerry White, Nobel laureate, landmine survivor

Ep. 71 —  A failed apprentice farmer turns into a renowned futurist / Thomas Frey, Founder and Executive Director, DaVinci Institute & Co-host, Futurati Podcast  Born on a grain farm in South Dakota, Thomas Frey was an unlikely candidate to become a world-renowned futurist and public speaker. But then one day, when he was four years old, Frey’s parents received a big mysterious box that would change his life forever. His mom put him on a tractor at age 11 to distract him from the television but Frey would prove to be, in his own words, a “terrible farmer”—because his mind was always elsewhere. In fact, it was in the future. And that’s where it has stayed ever since. I was delighted to have a deep conversation with Thomas Frey on the future of the world. He’s currently the founder and Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute & Co-host of the Futurati Podcast, with Trent Fowler.  Over the past decade, Frey has built an enormous following around the world based on his ability to develop accurate visions of the future and describe the opportunities ahead. Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Frey spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer. And if that isn’t proof that he’s no slacker, Frey also is a past member of the Triple Nine Society (the High I.Q. society for those over the 99.9th percentile). If you liked this episode, check out these other episodes: 🎙️Techtopia: 29. How drones, crypto, and satellites are changing the face of war / Thomas Frey & Trent Fowler 28. How Artificial Intelligence is transforming the craft of writing / Iman Oubou, “The Glass Ledge” 27. North Korean hacks complicate USG’s crypto-security efforts / Carole House, NSC, The White House 26. Technology is rewiring Ukraine’s narrative / Alex Deane & Bryan Cunningham 24. What does IRS Criminal Investigation do? / James Robnett, Deputy Chief, IRS (CI) 21. Can machines replace humans? / Courtney Bowman, Palantir Technologies 12. Grandson remembers a “Flying Saucer Pilgrimage” / Bryan Cunningham, UC, Irvine 13. Astrophysicist searches for aliens / Adam Frank, University of Rochester 🎙️When It Mattered: 67. He built a successful startup while battling bipolar disorder / Andy Dunn, Author, “Burn Rate” 62. Machines are the new patrons of artists / Agnieszka Pilat, Conceptual artist 55. Great-granddaughter of a SciFi pioneer spots a UFO / Alex Dietrich, US Navy 38. Father’s gift and brother’s illness led him to crypto / Joey Krug, Pantera Capital, Augur. 30. Acting class led her to build social robots / Heather Knight, Oregon State University. 28. Dermatologist breaks mold in medicine, sports, Silicon Valley / Dr. Michelle Longmire, Medable 21. Disenchanted doctor finds secret inspiration in heroin addict / Dr. Andrew Lees, Neurologist 6. Martial arts contest gives polymath life lesson / Dr. Shawna Pandya, Citizen-Scientist Astronaut

Ep. No. 70 — He built a career path at the age of eight to become a U.S. Air Force combat pilot and safe-keeper of U.S. nuclear weapons / Maj Gen Robert Wheeler, USAF (ret), CEO, Strategic Consulting Unlimited.  When Robert Wheeler was just 8 years old, his mother took him to the Chicago Air Show. It changed his life. From that moment on, Wheeler became obsessed with an unwavering goal: To become a U.S. fighter pilot.  Wheeler more than fulfilled his dream. During his 32-year career in the U.S. Air Force, he served as a combat pilot in the B-52 and B-2, earning more than 5,000 flight hours and seven operational commands, including Wing Commands in the two largest bomber wings in the Air Force.  Wheeler also served as the Deputy Director for Nuclear Operations, U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. As such, he served as the principal adviser to the commander on issues pertaining to strategic deterrence and nuclear operations. He served as the command’s principal flag officer responsible for management and oversight of the nuclear enterprise. He retired in March 2016. Major General Wheeler’s decorated career in the military culminated in his role as DOD Deputy Chief Information Officer for Information Infrastructure and Command, Control, Communications/Computers (C4), at the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.  In these critical roles, Wheeler obtained a wealth of knowledge about the ways of Vladimir Putin and has some key insights into the trajectory of the Russian President’s invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine’s surge of wins in the ground game in recent weeks. And he offers sobering insights into Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine if pushed too far against the wall.  Thanks for Listening. 👍 Please Subscribe and give a Thumbs Up!   🎙️https://bit.ly/ChitraRagavanChannel   👂Contact Chitra & Link to Podcast Platforms  🎙️https://chitra.lnk.to/bio   When It Mattered: 🎙️ Ep. 60. Putin laid his cards on the table years before the Ukraine invasion / Gen. James Jones, USMC 🎙️ Ep. 66. Distinguished diplomat reclaims her narrative / Marie Yovanovitch, “Lessons from the Edge” Techtopia: 🎙️ Ep. 29. How drones, crypto, and satellites are changing the future of war / Thomas Frey & Trent Fowler 🎙️ Ep. 26. Technology is rewiring Ukraine’s narrative / Alex Deane & Bryan Cunningham   Do check out these related articles in SWAAY ✍️  The Incredible, Indomitable Super-Survivors of Ukraine ✍️  A “Genuine Badass”: How Marie Yovanovitch Reclaimed Her Narrative and Reputation ✍️  Refugees in the Shadows: A Viral Insights Column on War, Displacement, and Super-Survivors

Ep. No. 69  —  A battered, bloodied, police officer proves her mettle during the January 6th insurrection on the U.S. Capitol / Officer Caroline Edwards, U.S. Capitol Police (USCP). Officer Caroline Edwards of the U.S. Capitol Police’s First Responder Unit reported for duty on January 6, 2021, along with her colleagues, with little warning from her supervisors about the clear and present danger of extreme violence and the potential use of firearms from the angry pro-Trump mob descending on the Capitol that morning. Officer Edwards is believed to be the first law enforcement officer injured by the rioters as she attempted to protect the west front of the Capitol. But despite being knocked unconscious, suffering from a concussion, and getting bear-sprayed and pepper-sprayed, Edwards recovered enough to rush to the aid of her fellow officers who were in grave danger from the violent crowd. This June, Officer Edwards testified about her ordeal before the Select Committee investigating the January 6th attacks. In this dramatic interview, Edwards describes what happened on January 6th and her long and painful recovery from her injuries and trauma. And she reveals how she always wanted to be a police officer but held back for years from fulfilling her dream because she thought she wasn’t physically up to the job. She certainly proved her mettle and learned just how tough she is on the day of the riots. I’m so grateful to Officer Edwards for sharing her incredible story of courage and resilience and those of her fellow officers. They rushed to her aid on January 6th, and she, in turn, reciprocated in full measure to help save them, despite her severe injuries, when they were overrun by the violent mob intent on overturning the results of the 2020 presidential elections at the behest of outgoing-President Donald Trump. If you would like to donate to the U.S.Capitol Police Memorial Fund, please click here. Thanks so much for listening!   Helpful Links: 👍 Please Subscribe and give me a Thumbs Up! 🎙️https://bit.ly/ChitraRagavanChannel 👂Contact Chitra & Podcast Platforms 🎙️https://chitra.lnk.to/bio   If you liked this episode please, check out these other great episodes! 🎙️When It Mattered: Ep. 56. Retired cop learns his job has just begun / Thomas Manger, USCP Ep. 66. Distinguished diplomat reclaims her narrative / Marie Yovanovitch, “Lessons from the Edge” 🎙️Techtopia: Ep. 1. Technology is fueling conspiracy theories / Joseph Coohill, Professor Buzzkill Ep. 2. How should the USG fight domestic terrorism and radicalization? / Anne Speckhard, ICSVE Ep. 5. Women and the alt-right/white nationalist movement / Seyward Darby, Author, Sisters in Hate Ep. 8. Countering QAnon, human trafficking, and disinformation-extremism / Anjana Rajan, Polaris Ep. 9. Journalism, fake news, and the disinformation era / Marcus Brauchli, North Base Media Media   Connect with and Follow me at 🌐 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chitrarag... 🌐 Twitter – https://twitter.com/chitra_ragavan 🌐 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/chitra_ragavan 🌐 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/chitra.ragav…   Other Helpful Links: ✍️ SWAAY: https://swaay.com/u/chitra/published-... 🌐 Website: https://goodstory.io 🌐 Website: https://chitraragavan.com

Ep. 68 — He survived a near-fatal shooting by a hitman hired by his ex-wife to become one of Hollywood’s top stuntmen / Garrett Warren, Stunt Actor/Director On May 20, 2000, Hollywood stuntman Garrett Warren was hanging out at his home in Westlake Village, California with his mom when the doorbell rang insistently. When Warren opened the door, he found himself facing the barrel of a gun. What happened next was not a stunt scene with fake bullets. Warren was shot four times, including in his right eye, and left to die on his front porch. The gunman fled the scene but not before he shot at Warren’s mother twice, missing narrowly, after she came to the door to see what all the commotion was about. Warren miraculously survived the attack but lost his right eye. His ex-wife, Claudio Haro, former wife of actor Joe Pesci, plead not guilty but was implicated in the attempted murder plot and sentenced to 12 years and four months in prision. Since then, Warren has gone on to become an immensely successful stunt performer, stunt double, fight coordinator, and unit director in major movies including Avatar, Mission Impossible III, the X-Men movies,  Logan, IronMan 2, Agents of SHIELD, and Spider-Man 2, to name just a few. He has taught martial arts and fight choreography to such celebrities as Jessica Alba, Jada Pinkett Smith, John Travolta, and Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a., “The Rock,” and is a personal trainer to many stars. I learned a wealth of information about the world of stunt choreography through my fascinating conversation with Garrett Warren and I know you will too! If you liked this episode, check out these other episodes: Ep. 65. Mexican gangsters faked avocado purchase to launder ransom payment / Patrick Struebi, Fairtrasa Ep. 63. Held hostage by a drug lord reveals the best and worst of humanity / Francisco Cantos Calderón / Former Vice President of Colombia Ep. 61. Heroism, activism, reconciliation with nature / Jerry White, Nobel laureate, landmine survivor Ep. 14. Terrifying robbery and kidnapping reveals what truly matters in life / Stanley Alpert, Attorney

Ep. 67  — He built a successful startup while waging a life-threatening battle against bipolar disorder / Andy Dunn, Co-founder, Bonobos, and Author, “Burn Rate: Launching A Startup And Losing My Mind.” Andy Dunn would never have predicted that he would wind up naked and writhing on the floor of Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric Emergency Room in New York — in the throes of a massive bipolar episode. Nor that when he would be released from Bellevue a week later, he would be arrested on charges of assaulting his then-girlfriend -now-wife, and her mother. That night in 2016 was a spectacular fall from grace for Andy Dunn, then the CEO and co-founder of the massively successful e-commerce-driven menswear brand, Bonobos. It was the most consequential but not the first time that Dunn had wound up in terrible situations during his nearly-two-decade battle against bipolar disorder.  All the while, he was leading and scaling Bonobos, which he ultimately sold to Walmart. Dunn writes about his struggle with bipolar disorder in unsparing detail in his new critically acclaimed bestseller, “Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind.” In riveting parallel narratives, Dunn uses his own relentlessly-cyclical battles against hypomania and depression, the hallmarks of bipolar disorder or manic depression as it used to be called,  to place tech startup founders under an unsparing lens as he explores the prevalence of mental illness in Silicon Valley. And he brilliantly parses the fine line between inspired genius and megalomania which are common traits among these exponentially successful entrepreneurs. Thanks for Listening. If you liked this episode, do check out these other episodes from When It Mattered: Ep. 50. Great career despite insurmountable obstacles / Leigh Steinberg, Steinberg Sports Ep. 21. Disenchanted doctor finds secret inspiration in heroin addict / Dr. Andrew Lees, Neurologist Ep. 37. Tumultuous childhood led to career in human behavior / Nicole Fisher, HHR Strategies

Ep. No. 65 — Fired by President Donald Trump, a distinguished diplomat helps impeach him and reclaims her narrative / Marie Yovanovitch, Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and author, “Lessons from the Edge”. On April 24, 2019, in the dead of night, with no explanation, Marie Yovanovitch got a call from the U.S State Department, essentially removing her immediately from her post as Ambassador to Ukraine. A few days later, back in Washington DC — a shell-shocked Yovanovitch learned the extraordinary details of why she had been fired from her job and that the man behind it was none other than her boss, President Donald Trump. After the shock wore off, Ambassador Yovanovitch decided to fight back. Pilloried by the right-wing media, she publicly testified in Congress under oath during Trump’s impeachment hearings, resulting in his first of two impeachments. Yovanovitch has written a fascinating new memoir called “Lessons from the Edge,”  in which she systematically lays out the months-long attempts by Trump and his cronies to ruin her reputation and subvert democracy using a foreign power, Ukraine. And she describes how she seized back her narrative from the former president. As Congressional hearings cast new light on Trump’s last-ditch efforts to stay in power — culminating in the January 6, 2021 riots in the US Capitol by his supporters — I’m so honored to welcome the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. If you liked this episode, please check out these other episodes: When It Mattered: 60. Putin laid his cards on the table years before Ukraine invasion / Gen. James Jones, USMC  56. Retired cop learns his job has just begun / Thomas Manger, US Capitol Police 15. Big-time political advisor returns to his small-town roots, finds urgent new cause /James Carville Techtopia: 26. Technology is re-wiring Ukraine’s narrative / Alex Deane and Bryan Cunningham

Ep. 65 — An epiphany in Peru results in a kidnapping in Mexico that galvanizes the evolution of a fair trade social entrepreneur / Patrick Struebi, Founder & Executive Chairman, Fairtrasa Patrick Struebi was eager to fly home to Switzerland on one of his periodic visits after spending eight years in Mexico establishing Fairtrasa, one of the world’s largest fair trade organizations for avocados and other fruits from Latin America. It was the morning of January 28, 2011. Struebi’s then-girlfriend had come to pick him up at his home, to drive him to the bus station, from where he planned to go Mexico City to take the plane back home. As he put the bags in the trunk, two cars suddenly blocked the driveway and two masked men with guns threw him into one of the cars and whisked him away in a highly orchestrated kidnapping for ransom plot. Thrown on the floor of a cold cellar, masked and handcuffed, and in the clutches of ruthless Mexican gangsters who made him watch videos of violent killings, Struebi somehow kept his cool and tried to figure a way out. He was released after five days of coordinated activity between the Mexican and Swiss governments. The kidnapping gave Struebi a lens into the economic conditions of his hostage takers and renewed his commitment to building Fairtasa as a means to lift Latin American farmers out of poverty. For International Fruit Day this July 1st, I’m honored to welcome a pioneer in the field of fair trade, Patrick Struebi, serial social entrepreneur, thought leader, humanitarian, and founder and Executive Chairman of the Fairtrasa Group. Struebi has never publicly shared the story of his kidnapping publicly. He’s doing it here for the first time so I’m grateful for his trust. If you liked this episode, check out these other episodes: 63. Held hostage by a drug lord reveals the best and worst of humanity / Francisco Cantos Calderón / Former Vice President of Colombia 61. Heroism, activism, reconciliation with nature / Jerry White, Nobel laureate, landmine survivor 14. Terrifying robbery and kidnapping reveals executive leadership lessons

Ep. No. 64 — Disobeying his boss turned a humanitarian crisis into a calling / Sasha Chanoff, CEO and Founder, RefugePoint and Co-Author, “From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decisions”. In 2000, refugee expert and humanitarian aid worker Sasha Chanoff was in the Congo on a mission to evacuate a very specific set of Tutsi refugees, who were on a UN resettlement list. But as he was about to leave with those refugees, Chanoff was invited into a tent. And what he saw in that tent would shake the foundation of his life, soul, and career. That “crucible moment” as Chanoff calls his experience in that tent prompted him to launch RefugePoint, whose mission is to address the critical and unmet needs of those who fall through the cracks of humanitarian assistance and have no other options for survival. RefugePoint has a special focus on women, children, and urban refugees. Chanoff is the co-author of the leadership book, “From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decisions,” which he co-authored with his dad, noted non-fiction writer, David Chanoff. He has won many awards and accolades for his extraordinary contributions to addressing the global refugee crisis. In this moving episode, Chanoff examines the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global refugee and humanitarian crisis that it is exacerbating. And he dives deep into his and RefugePoints efforts to address the huge gaps in the systems put in place globally to help the 100 million people that have been forced to leave their homes, belongings, and families behind, sacrificing everything they know and love, as is happening in Ukraine today. As we commemorate World Refugee Day today and recognize the grim realities of the forced migration crisis happening all around the world, I’m honored to welcome a pioneer in the field, Sasha Chanoff, CEO and Founder of RefugePoint. If you liked this episode, check out these other episodes: 26. Technology is rewiring Ukraine’s narrative / Alex Deane & Bryan Cunningham 63. Held hostage by a drug lord reveals the best and worst of humanity / Francisco Cantos Calderón / Former Vice President of Colombia 61. Heroism, activism, reconciliation with nature / Jerry White, Nobel laureate, landmine survivor 22. How is Polaris fighting human trafficking? / Anjana Rajan, CTO, Polaris 43. Ignoring advice to avoid philosophy pays off in big ways / Courtney Bowman, Palantir 21. Disenchanted doctor finds secret inspiration in heroin addict / Dr. Andrew Lees, Neurologist

Ep. No. 63 — Kidnapped and held hostage by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar revealed the best and worst of humanity / Francisco Santos Calderón, former Vice President of Colombia and former Colombian Ambassador to the United States. For months, Pablo Escobar, notorious head of the Medellín drug cartel and journalist Francisco Santos Calderon — one of his fiercest critics in the press, had been playing a dangerous cat and mouse game. Escobar was intent on kidnapping Santos — then the Editor-in-Chief of El Tiempo, Colombia’s largest and most influential publication — and other journalists, as a bargaining chip to prevent extradition to the United States to stand trial for his murderous greed. Santos, tipped off to Escobar’s intentions, had been changing his travel routes and work routines constantly to evade the cartel kingpin’s henchmen. But on September 19, 1990, Santos was riding home from work in his bulletproof vehicle when the unthinkable happened. His car was surrounded by gunmen who killed his driver and kidnapped Santos who was one of 10 journalists and elites held hostage by Escobar that year. He was chained to a bed and held for eight months before being released. Santos was just 30 years old when Escobar snatched him off the streets. He was lucky to be alive. Between 1980 and 2000, nearly 180 journalists were killed for speaking up against the drug cartels. Santos would launch a highly successful campaign to reduce the epidemic of kidnappings in Colombia. He left the country for two years to avoid getting assassinated by the Marxist-Leninist guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), after getting tipped off by the CIA about FARC’s intentions. He worked at El País the most prominent newspaper in Spain. Santos eventually was elected to serve two terms as Colombia’s Vice President under President Álvaro Uribe. He subsequently also served as the Colombian Ambassador to the United States under President Donald J. Trump from 2018 – 2020. Santos is now wearing his journalist hat again. He’s highlighting the precarious political situation in Venezuela, and speaking out about Russia, China, and Iran, which he views as the unholy trifecta threatening the stability of geopolitics today. In 1996, he and his nine kidnapped compatriots became the characters in “News of a Kidnapping,” the English-language non-fiction book by famed Colombian novelist and Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Gabriel García Márquez. The book was originally published in Spanish the year before as “Noticia de un Secuestro.’’ Santos declined to co-author “News of a Kidnapping” with Márquez, which he now says was “a very stupid decision on his part” but he later relented and spoke with Márquez over several days for the book. Apart from Márquez and the journalists Santos spoke with after his release, in the nearly-32 years since his kidnapping, he has not shared his story at all in detail. Don’t miss this riveting episode of “When It Mattered.” Thanks for Listening. If you liked this episode, please check out these other episodes: Ep. 61 – Heroism, activism, reconciliation with nature / Jerry White, Nobel laureate, landmine survivor  Ep. 14 – Terrifying robbery and kidnapping reveals what truly matters in life / Stanley Alpert, Attorney Ep. 20 – Brought back to life, undertook new mission / Frank Shankwitz, Make-A-Wish Foundation

Ep. 62:  She went from poverty in communist-era Poland to becoming the artist of choice of Silicon Valley billionaires for her renaissance-inspired conceptual art of machines and robots/ Agnieszka Pilat, Conceptual Artist. Born in the shadow of communism, in the grip of poverty, in the cradle of post-industrial Central Poland, Agnieska Pilat acted on her burning desire to leave her homeland and headed to America in 2004.    She landed in the Bay Area where a transformative book recommendation from her hairdresser, and her industrial roots in Poland, led to an epiphany which led her to start painting machines. First the traditional kind. Gears and widgets and meters and fire bells. Then — robots. One in particular, her big bright yellow 70 pound cybernetic “pet” if you could call it that / model/assistant/apprentice/Spot, on loan to her from the famed and controversial robot maker Boston Dynamics. Over the past decade, Agnieskza Pilat’s classically-trained, renaissance-inspired, contemporary art around man and machine, technology and automation has gained a big following among Silicon Valley’s elite billionaires. Her works of art have been acquired by collectors including Sotheby’s and tech titans such as Craig McCaw, Richard Branson, Yuri Milner, and Larry Silverstein among others. Several of her paintings are featured in the latest Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections. Pilat has been described as an “artist who brings technology to life,” ‘the darling of Silicon Valley,” and a “technology storyteller.”  Her latest exhibition is titled Renaissance 2.0, and is an homage to Silicon Valley’s renaissance. It was such a pleasure to catch up with Agnieszka Pilat about her life and her renaissance-inspired contemporary art of man and machine.

Ep. 61 — He became a celebrated anti-landmine crusader after a horrific landmine accident but then began questioning his superhero narrative / Jerry White, Nobel Peace Laureate / Author / Professor of Practice, University of Virginia. In 1984, Jerry White went to Israel for his junior year, “study abroad” program at Hebrew University. On their spring break that April, White, and his two American roommates went out hiking in the Golan Heights in northern Israel, tracing the footsteps of Biblical prophets. They got off the beaten path to set up camp. One morning, White walked ahead of his friends and stepped on a landmine. He was just 20 years old. The tragedy of losing his right leg to a landmine transformed White into a student of resilience and survivorship and an advocate for landmine victims. He became a charismatic activist, who worked closely with Princess Diana, Queen Noor, Paul McCartney, and others to fight for a global ban on anti-personnel mines. White’s high-impact campaigns in the wake of his landmine injury which cost him his right leg resulted in three major treaties, The Landmine Ban Treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Cluster Munitions Ban.. In 1997, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. White also served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, looking at data-driven outcomes in conflict negotiations. And he became a Senior Ashoka Fellow. But over time, White began to question his landmine survivor hero-narrative and dreamed of retiring his “landmine cape” as he likes to call it. His soul-searching on how that accident changed his relationship with nature and why that landmine came to be on that Israeli hill in the first place, has resulted in a prolific body of thinking, speaking, and writing. White has a new book out this November, called Religicide: Confronting the Roots of Anti-Religious Violence. The book is now available for pre-order on Amazon. White also wrote a 2004 book on resilience, titled, “I Will Not Be Broken.” Today, White is an award-winning teacher, activist, and leader. He currently serves as a Professor of Practice in Religion and Political Science at the University of Virginia and teaches the popular course: Religion, Violence, and Strategy: How to Stop Killing in the Name of God. My conversation with Jerry White about what happens when you dare to question your own narrative and when you lose touch with the earth was a profound experience and I am so glad to share it with you today.

Ep. 60 — How history, geography, lineage, and duty converged to shape this retired four-star General’s decorated career / James L. Jones, Commandant, United States Marine Corps, Commander, United States European Command, Former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, & Chairman, Jones Group International. It was by no means pre-ordained but perhaps it was inevitable. Born in 1943, the son of a Marine in WWII, in a family of Marines, and spending his early childhood and formative years in France, inspired James L. Jones to join the United States Marines Corps, where he spent a distinguished four-decade career — retiring from the Marine Corps on February 1 as a decorated four-star general.  It’s a real honor to speak with my guest this week, General James Jones, who during his military career, served as Commandant of the Marine Corps, Commander, United States European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe.  Upon his retirement, Jones served as Chairman of the Congressional Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq and later as Special Envoy for Middle East security. President Barack Obama then invited Jones to serve as his National Security Advisor. In that capacity, Gen. Jones had the rare opportunity to see then-Prime Minister, now-President, Vladimir Putin, up close and personal.  In this fascinating wide-ranging narrative, Jones describes how over breakfast with him and President Obama in July 2009, Putin shared his litany of grievances that Jones believes have shaped the Russian leader’s hostility and aggression towards NATO and towards Ukraine, with an imminent threat to invade that country, potentially triggering a global conflict. Jones now leads a global strategic advisory firm, Jones Group International, based here in the Washington DC area. I know you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did and will find it both highly informative and relevant given Putin’s potential invasion of Ukraine.

Ep. 59 —  A Portuguese Roman Catholic janitor and immigrant to Canada becomes the “Bar Mitzvah Photography king” of Montreal / Braulio Rocha, Photographer & Co-Founder, Rocha Studio. I thought it would be so nice to start the New Year with a heartwarming success story. This is the rags-to-riches journey of a Portuguese Roman Catholic immigrant to Canada named Braulio Rocha, who, just five years ago, was a humble janitor at the majestic Shaar Hashomayim Ashkananze synagogue, known affectionately to its congregants as “The Shaar.” But one day, Rocha, an amateur photographer, seized a rare opportunity to trade in his mop for a camera to shoot a bris when the real photographer was a no-show. It was one of the most consequential moments of a life filled with adversity. That bris led to other brises and bar mitzvahs. And today, Rocha has become the “Bar Mitzvah photography king of Montreal!” as proclaimed in this lovely recent New York Times profile.  This is a story that transcends geography, culture, language, and religion. It’s a story of hope and above all, about second chances. I hope you enjoy it!   And if you like this episode, you may enjoy my other photography episodes both on this podcast, When It Mattered, and my technology podcast, Techtopia, listed below.   When It Mattered:  Ep. 35 — A war photographer confronts her own mortality as she bears witness to the world’s worst wars / Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist. Ep. 12 — A brain cancer diagnosis leads a 27-year old mental health worker to use photography to help parents of critically ill children reconcile with death and dying /  Caroline Catlin, writer, photographer. Techtopia:  Ep. 18 — A War Photographer Assesses the Ramifications of the U.S. Pullout of Afghanistan / Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist. 

Ep. 58 — A shocking loss leads a grieving daughter and budding communications leader to rethink the meaning of human connectivity / Susan McPherson, founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, and author, “The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships.” When Susan McPherson was 22 years old, her parents were on vacation in Puerto Rico when the unthinkable happened. It was New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1986. Her dad had dropped her mother off at the casino of what then was the Dupont Plaza hotel in San Juan. At 3:30 pm, three disgruntled employees of the hotel who were embroiled in a labor dispute with the owners, set fire to the hotel, killing nearly 100 people — including McPherson’s mother — and causing hundreds of injuries. It was the most catastrophic hotel fire in Puerto Rican history and the second deadliest fire in U.S. history. The three men who set the fire were brought to justice and received long jail sentences and there were big changes to hotel fire safety laws and protocols. But it was small comfort for McPherson, for whom the shocking loss of her mother was a profound moment of grief and transformation. I recently had the privilege of talking with McPherson about her amazing life story and how her parents inspired her to be who she is today. She is the founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, a communications consultancy focused on the intersection of brands and social impact.  McPherson is a super-connector, angel investor, and corporate responsibility expert with 25+ years of experience in marketing, public relations, and sustainability communications. She’s a popular speaker and a regular contributor to high-profile business publications. McPherson also is the author of The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships — particularly relevant in today’s pandemic fueled anti-social world.

Ep. 57 — The Journalist and Author who Predicted the Rise of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda Examines the Legacy of the 9/11 Mastermind and the Global Jihad that he Spawned / Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst & Author, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” In 1983, a British university student named Peter Bergen traveled to Pakistan with two friends to make a documentary called Refugees of Faith, about the Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion of their country. Little did he know it at the time. But that trip would be the first of many and one of the most consequential in Bergen’s life. It led to a nearly four-decade body of work documenting the rise and fall of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, his group al Qaeda, and the global jihad they spawned, rooted in Afghanistan. Today, as we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and against the backdrop of the disastrous U.S. pull out of Afghanistan, I have as my guest, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen, here to reflect on bin Laden’s legacy. Bergen produced the first television interview of bin Laden in 1997, aired on CNN. And he was the only journalist to visit the Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound where bin Laden was killed, in a 2011 raid by U.S. Navy Seals. The building was later demolished. The author of nine books including six on bin Laden, Bergen has a fascinating new biography of the terrorist, titled, “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The new biography is based on Bergen’s body of work, plus thousands of documents, journals, and other materials seized in the Abbottabad raid, along with hundreds of interviews — including with many in bin Laden’s inner circle. Using these documents, Bergen paints an intimate portrait of the terrorist in isolation in the final months, weeks, and days before he was killed by U.S. Navy Seals. In a 228-page family journal, bin Laden looks back on his global jihad revolution, concerned that his legacy and that of al Qaeda’s will be lost in the peaceful Arab Spring revolution in the Middle East. Bin Laden and his family worry that he had waited too long to speak and that he was becoming irrelevant. And he was worried about the al Qaeda brand being tarnished by the killings of Muslim civilians by groups such as ISIS. For these and more fascinating details about bin Laden’s final days, what Bergen calls, “bin Laden unplugged,” do tune in to this riveting episode.

Ep. 56 — A Retired Police Executive Returns to Duty to Help Rebuild the United States Capitol Police after the Violent January 6 Insurrection  / J. Thomas Manger, USCP Chief of Police. After 42 years in policing, including for two of the largest police agencies in the National Capital Region, J. Thomas Manger had retired and was enjoying his life as a security consultant and public citizen. Then on January 6, thousands of white extremists — incited by former President Donald Trump and his minions — breached the U.S. Capitol, vandalizing the building and grounds, threatening the lives of members of Congress, of Vice President Mike Pence and his family, and mercilessly heckling, beaing, tear gassing, and injuring hundreds of ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered U.S. Capitol Police. Manger watched the events unfolding on TV, horrified and near tears as the rioters roamed freely across the Capitol, hanging nooses, taking selfies, shattering windows, breaking doors and assaulting cops, in a ruthless challenge to democracy. When Manger was invited to become the new police chief, he was reluctant to leave retirement behind. But haunted by the January 6 images, he couldn’t  turn down the call of duty. Sworn in on July 23rd, Chief Manger is a little more than a month into his job and confronting some of the biggest challenges of his long and distinguished career. His 1800 rank and file sworn officers are still struggling to absorb and recover from the magnitude of those violent attacks. Hundreds are recovering from their injuries and are emotionally traumatized, scores have already left the force, and then there are the memories of two of their own who lost their lives to a stroke and to suicide after the insurrection. Put simply, many officers are experiencing a crisis of confidence in their leadership like never before. Can Tom Manger fix it?

Ep. 55 — A fighter pilot and great-granddaughter of a SciFi pioneer sees a UFO and connects with the vast community of UFO believers / Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, U.S. Navy (retired). Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich was going about her business this spring, getting ready to retire from active duty as one of the first female fighter pilots in the US. Then she got an unexpected feeler from 60 Minutes, the CBS television show. The U.S. Government was preparing to release a report on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs. Would Dietrich be willing to go on the show and talk about the strange sight that she and her four teammates had seen up in the air during a training mission back in 2004, the producer asked. Dietrich thought hard about it and decided that taxpayers needed to know more about the videos (now unclassified) that had been captured that day —  videos that you all may have seen on the news over the past few weeks. That decision to go public and help remove the stigma associated with reporting strange sightings has put the introverted and media-shy Dietrich in the spotlight. It has also connected her to many UFO believers via social media – a strange spot for someone to be in for someone who is not a science fiction fan, despite a rich family history in science fiction writing. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: US Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich was going about her business this spring, getting ready to retire from active duty as one of the first female fighter pilots in the US. Then she got an unexpected feeler from 60 Minutes, the CBS television show. The US government was preparing to release a report on unidentified flying objects, or UFO’s. Would Dietrich be willing to go on the show and talk about the strange site that she and her four teammates had seen up in the air during a training mission back in 2004? The 60 Minutes producer asked. Hello, everyone I’m Chitra Raghavan, and this is When it Mattered. Chitra Ragavan: Dietrich thought hard about it and decided that taxpayers needed to know more about the videos, now unclassified that had been captured that day, videos that you all may have seen on the news over the past few weeks. That decision to go public and help remove the stigma associated with reporting strange sightings, or inexplicable phenomena, has put the introverted and media shy Dietrich in the spotlight. It has also connected her to legions of UFO believers on social media, a rather strange spot for someone to be in who is not a science fiction fan, despite a rich family history in science fiction writing. Chitra Ragavan: Joining me is retired Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich. She served as an F/A-18F strike fighter pilot from the VFA-41 “Black Aces” of Lemoore, California. Dietrich retired from the US Navy after 20 years of service, having logged more than 1,250 hours and 375 carrier arrested landings. She served two combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Dietrich is now serving at the National Center for Atmospheric Research on their talent learning and development team, with a mission of science and service to society. Alex, welcome to When it Mattered. Alex Dietrich: Thank you. Chitra Ragavan: Why did you decide to join the Navy and become a fighter pilot? It’s a rather non-traditional career, pretty formidable barriers and a daunting challenge, in addition to putting your life on the line in service of your country? Alex Dietrich: Well, I would say that I was a typical teenager. I went to an atypical high school, it was the Illinois Math and Science Academy, but I had the typical teenage angst, and I wanted to have fun, I wanted to have an adventure. And so when college counselors and teachers were asking me what I wanted to do, I had to declare a major for college and I had to take all of these standardized tests, I said, “Oh, I don’t know what I want to study, and I don’t really know what I want to do.” I thought, well maybe I could have an adventure, maybe I could do something fun first and then settle down later in life, and so that’s why I decided to pursue Naval aviation, and I did that through the NROTC scholarship at George Washington University, so four years of going and having a normal college experience, but also doing some summer training with the Navy, and some Naval science courses throughout the year. And then I graduated and commissioned in May of 2001, into the Navy. Chitra Ragavan: So your initial goals weren’t all that lofty and ambitious. Alex Dietrich: No, not at all. Again, it was all about me and my selfish adventure, and wanting to do something cool and exciting while I was young and had the energy. Chitra Ragavan: But all of that changed on the day of your first flight, which also happened to be on 9/11. That must have been quite a day for you. Tell us a little bit about that. Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so I graduated, again, in May of 2001, and I headed down to the beach in Pensacola, Florida, which is where our ground school is. We call it aviation preflight indoctrination, API, and then from there I went to Corpus Christi Texas for flight school for our primary flight training, and just a little T34 turboprop planes. And we were just doing the initial, we call it a fam phase, or familiarization, when 9/11 happened. And obviously that was a huge shock to the country, to the world, but for me and my peers, it was a total paradigm shift. We realized that it wasn’t about me and my selfish adventure, that I had raised my right hand and taken an oath of service, and service to something bigger than myself, and I needed to figure out what that meant, and how I was going to contribute in a meaningful way. Chitra Ragavan: That must have been an incredible change in your perspective. I want to go back a little bit in time, from before 9/11, when you were actually in flight school that summer, you were given a very unusual and interesting extra credit question in an otherwise boring FAA manual that you described to me a couple of days ago as a sleeping pill of a manual. What was that extra question that you were given? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so this was some interesting foreshadowing. So summer of 2001, in my initial ground school flight training, this flight rules and regulations course where they’re teaching us about civilian airspace of how to stay out of trouble and not get a flight violation, there was an extra credit question that said, “What do you do if you see a UFO, how do you report it?” And my peers and I thought it was an absurd question, that it was silly, that it was a trick, but then when we opened up this thick FAR/AIM Manual, that’s the FAA’s flight rules and regulations manual, we opened it up and we said, huh, there actually is this page in here with this phone number to call when you see a UFO. And I thought, that’s weird, that’s cool, and also what a brilliant teaching technique that this instructor found this absurd little tidbit to include and serve as a hook to get us to actually open up the book and read through it. Chitra Ragavan: And I guess it became very relevant, which you probably didn’t realize at the time, but fast forwarding to November 14th, 2004, that question actually became relevant to you and your team, there were four of you who were up in the air on a training mission. Tell us briefly what happened next, what did you see? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so we were launched and expecting to do this routine training mission off the coast of Southern California, when we were vectored to intercept a real-world contact that the USS Princeton, one of the other ships in our battle group, was picking up on their radar. And when we merged with it, we saw something weird in the water, some disturbance, and then we saw this weird flying Tic Tac shaped object that we engaged with, and it disappeared almost as fast and abruptly as it came into the picture. And we were shocked, we were confused, we were alarmed that we couldn’t identify it visually, that the Princeton wasn’t able to identify it from their radar. And then a follow on flight, a single aircraft with two people, was able to get some clear footage of it, but again, from that we weren’t able to identify what it was, or how it was maneuvering the strange way that it was. Alex Dietrich: When we came back to the ship one of the first things I said was, “Does anybody have a copy of the FAR/AIM Manual? I need to find that page with that phone number to call to report a UFO.” But the other aircraft in my flight, the lead aircraft, was my commanding officer, Commander Dave Fravor, and he was the skipper of the squadron, the most senior aviator in my chain of command, and so I didn’t call a phone number or call the FAA directly, I deferred to him and his seniority in terms of reporting the incident up the chain of command, and taking any follow that would be appropriate. Chitra Ragavan: And so you all were pretty vocal about this, you were amazed and reported it, even though probably as a junior officer, you were probably a little concerned about, as you know, there’s a lot of potential stigma associated with disclosing these kinds of things, and people are like, what is she talking about? What happened next, was this taken seriously? What was the next couple of steps that happened? Alex Dietrich: So I would say that we did an official debrief. We went to our intelligence officer, or intelligence team on the ship, and we gave them the information that we had. So in that respect it was taken seriously. Our colleagues, our friends, and the folks on the ship certainly teased us, and we had a good laugh about, again, the absurdity of the situation. We’re certainly conditioned as Americans, or in our culture, with all of our movies and TV shows, to make fun of UFO’s and people who see them. So on a personal side, there was teasing and this banter that was happening, but then on a professional side, I did feel that it was recorded, that the incident was noted by the chain of command, and eventually this was confirmed a few years later when I was contacted by members of the team in the Pentagon who were investigating UAP incidents. I assume that it was part of this ATIP being referred to in the media, the first generation being ATIP, and then the current- Chitra Ragavan: The organization that’s looking into this, yeah. Alex Dietrich: Right, and I think the current title is UAP task force. But whatever the title, the intent was to make sure that they had all the information and that they were able to add this incident to a pool of data, or similar cases, to look for trends and do a thorough analysis. So from about 2009 until this year, I’ve been in contact with, in a one-way flow. They call me in to answer questions about this particular incident, and maybe show or share something that they have from a different incident and say, “Is what you saw? Is this similar?” I’ll say yes or no, but they’re not giving me a download of everything else that they’re looking at. Alex Dietrich: So just because I saw something weird in 2004 does not mean I have insight into all of these other incidents that may or may not be happening. So from that perspective I think that, yes, this has been taken seriously by the department of defense, by the folks in the Pentagon who are looking into this as a potential national security issue, national defense, is this an adversary? Is this some sort of disruptive technology that’s either an immediate kinetic threat off the coast of California, or is it some sort of espionage effort that is collecting information on our systems, on our tactics, and in the case of 2004, we were training, so are they watching us to see how we maneuver and how we react? So I think that it is being taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. Chitra Ragavan: Now your colleagues probably didn’t know it at the time, that you have this rich family history in science fiction. I mean, it’s really amazing. Tell us a little bit about what that connection is. Alex Dietrich: So I personally, I don’t enjoy science fiction. I don’t read it, I don’t watch it, I enjoy documentaries, I think that truth is stranger than fiction, and oftentimes more entertaining. But my great-grandfather, Roman Starzl, was one of the, I guess, pioneers of the science fiction genre. He was an author and publisher of a newspaper in a small town in Iowa, and so he wrote a lot, but he did write these science fiction stories that were gobbled up by folks when that genre was beginning in that era. And so it’s a legacy that my family is proud of, and personally I’ve skimmed a few of his stories but, like I said, I have a hard time following them because I’m just not that interested in science fiction. Chitra Ragavan: And his son was also someone who was in a line of work different than writing science fiction, but at the time, the work that he was pioneering in medicine was considered almost science fiction, correct? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so Roman’s son, Thomas, who was my grandfather’s brother, Thomas Starzl, he was the pioneer of human organ transplantation. And absolutely, when he started his work, the thought of taking an organ out of a person and installing it into another body just seemed like science fiction. Folks thought he was crazy, they thought he was like a Frankenstein mad scientist, that he had a God complex. He faced all sorts of criticism and friction in trying to advance this field and do this systematic research in the lab. But he eventually was able to persevere, and as we know, it’s commonplace now. I went to the DMV recently and they ask you on your driver’s license, do you want to be an organ donor? Yes, no. Alex Dietrich: So we might not understand the science behind it, the surgical techniques or the immunosuppressive therapies, the medicine or the drugs that you take to prevent rejecting that donor organ, we may not understand it, but we all accept it as normal and possible. And so yeah, that’s another family legacy that we’re proud of, and that I think is a demonstration of being open-minded and innovative, but also grounded in the principles of sound science and making sure that the results are replicable, and that you have evidence to back up what you’re trying to do. Chitra Ragavan: So has that influenced how you’re looking at these unidentified aerial phenomenon, as the government now calls them, or UFO’s as we know them to be, has that influenced how you see it? I’m sure people are asking you all the time, “But why can’t you tell us what it is? What could it be? Give us your hypothesis,” right? Alex Dietrich: Yeah. It’s so interesting that people think that I spend a lot of time thinking about this, just because I had an encounter, but I don’t. I had this encounter in 2004, but it doesn’t scratch that part of my brain that is really interested in pursuing the why behind it, or the what behind it. I’m not a UFO-ologist, I don’t spend time reading or researching this area. A lot of people do, but it’s just not that interesting to me. I have a degree in civil engineering, and I chose that because I do prefer the hard science, or the tangible science. I had courses in concrete and steel and soil and water, and things that I could touch and see, and really visualize the forces involved. Alex Dietrich: So when folks ask me, “What do you think it was?” Or, “What do you think about all these other incidents that people are reporting?” I say, “Well first of all, I don’t know that those other incidents are related.” It would be irresponsible of me to lump them all together and say they’re all of the same origin, or the same phenomenon. And furthermore, I’m just not qualified to do that analysis. I don’t have any of the technical, or I don’t have the education to help me understand that degree of physics, or what might be involved. Chitra Ragavan: I think this report is going to do, this upcoming report, it’s going to be released in the next couple of weeks. I mean, is it going to assuage all of the UFO believers out there? I mean, is it going to answer any questions, is it going to change hearts and minds? What’s your sense of it? Alex Dietrich: I don’t think so. I would be really interested to hear from the social scientists right now. And I have a feeling that they’re probably exhausted from the last four or five years of our political situation, and analyzing the collective psyche that it led to an insurgence on the capital. Hopefully they’re all taking a well deserved vacation. But I would like to have them weigh in on, what’s the psychology behind these UFO believers, and what’s the sociology and the anthropology behind these communities of folks, whether they’re on the extreme of the conspiracy theorists, or whether they’re on the extreme of the debunkers. Alex Dietrich: There are these tribes that have organized around this issue, and I’m interested in that, how they identify, how they communicate, what their goals are, and how many of them see this report as some sort of paradigm shift or, I don’t know. I don’t know what they want, and I suspect that the report won’t give them what they want. And part of their ethos is this anticipation, that they enjoy the pursuit of the unknown more than actually figuring out what is behind any one of these particular incidents. Chitra Ragavan: Yeah, fascinating. And weirdly, you’re not interested in science fiction, but this thing has now connected you to this whole world of people out there, they’re probably reaching out to you and probably identifying with you in a certain way, because you’ve somehow shared this experience that many of them believe that they’ve had as well. Alex Dietrich: It’s some sort of strange karma, I guess. Yeah, that I would say, I don’t want anything to do with this, and I’ve suddenly become a magnet. It’s really interesting, so people have been reaching out to me for years, and it’s interesting that when reporters now are calling me they say, “Why did you decide to speak out?” And I tell them, “I have never not been speaking openly about this, it’s just that 60 Minutes had never called me before, and when they did, I agreed to talk on this larger platform.” But folks had been reaching out to me for years, from serious journalists and reporters, to curious citizens or conspiracy theorists. And so I can usually tell from their tone, whether they call me on the phone, or in their email, whether they seem of sound mind and stable, or whether they are kooky. Alex Dietrich: But what’s interesting to me is that there’s been an uptick now, since the 60 Minutes report, of people who are articulate, and they seem of absolutely sound mind, who are reaching out to share their stories with me. And I don’t know what they expect me to do with them, and I guess I could relay them up through this official reporting channel and be a node for that, but what’s interesting is, again, this psychological need to be validated, or to share this experience with someone. And a lot of them do, they reach out to me and they say, “I saw you on 60 Minutes, and you don’t seem crazy, and I’m not crazy, and I just need to share with you this experience I had 10 years ago, or 20 years ago.” It’s as if they want me to hold it with them and share this burden that they’ve been carrying around, that they’ve been too afraid to share, or they didn’t know where to share it without sounding crazy, or maybe risking their career or their relationships by being lumped in with the UFO freaks. Alex Dietrich: So I think that that’s a really interesting phenomenon that’s happening right now, and I try to acknowledge as much as I can, I try to send back, at least a one-liner and I say, thank you for sharing, I hear you, I see you, hang in there. Chitra Ragavan: Well people now associate you with the Lieutenant Commander who’s talking about UFO’s, but really you’ve had a very successful career as a fighter pilot, you’ve broken a lot of barriers in a very male dominated industry, so to speak. It must not have been easy for you, I’d love to know what that has been like as you’ve now retired and you’re looking back, the barriers that you broke, and now you’re helping others break as well. Alex Dietrich: Sure. Well I’d say, first of all, that I stand on the shoulder of giants. And although I am one of a handful of female fighter pilots, I’m not the first, and there are women who were truly groundbreaking, and dating all the way back to World War II with the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots who served as instructors, as transporting the aircraft off the assembly line to their various spaces within the US in order to free up the men to go overseas and deploy in the combat zone. So those women were flying these, these beast aircrafts, these bombers and fighters long before me and my generation of, of women pilots, so I just want to give a tip of the hat to them. And then of course in the eighties and nineties there were really the first combat women who entered after the repeal of the combat exclusion, and I think that was under the Clinton Administration and ’91, ’92, and so those first women really, just a load of gratitude to them. Alex Dietrich: But we haven’t reached a critical mass yet. We are still working to provide networks of support for young women who are coming up through flight school and into the fleet, so it’s important for them to have a lateral network of support with peers, so that they don’t feel the tokenism being the only woman, or the only minority in a squadron. That can be hard. And then also that they have a vertical network of support, that they have mentors and role models in the senior ranks. Each year we’re getting a few more that promote to command, or promote to even the ranks of Admiral, in order to provide that line of support back down. If you can see it, you can be it. Alex Dietrich: I was already out of the squadron the first time I was able to attend a conference, it’s called the Women in Aviation International, but when I did it was one of the first times that I’d ever connected with other women in flight suits in a large group, and there were probably 70 or 80 in the room, military aviators, in this group of thousands of other civilian pilots and air traffic controllers and maintainers, everybody in the aviation industry. But I just thought, wow, where have you been all my life, all my career, like unicorns. And so there’s been a real effort to connect now, which is much easier to do with social media and all of our online networks. So we’ve really tried to organize and reach out to those young women who are coming up, and lift them up with support as we can, whether it’s meeting up in these little local chapters, we have Facebook groups, and things like that, or whether it’s actually going to something formal, like this annual conference, to share our stories and provide professional advice, and just support each other in our development. Chitra Ragavan: And you’re a founding member of the military’s eMentor program, which is promoting membership and opportunity for future generations of minorities in non-traditional fields, and I think there are various programs that you support. What drives you to do what you do, and what are a couple of these programs that you’re hoping will make a difference? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re very proud of eMentor, And again, that’s one of those formal initiatives to try to connect women and minorities to be deliberate and methodical about mentoring, to create time and space for these young women to say, these are my goals, or these are my questions, and to connect them with mentors who can say, yeah, I’ve been there, done that, let me tell you my experience, my lessons learned. Or my mistakes, so that maybe you can avoid or minimize your own. And then these networking groups, like Women in Aviation International, I’m a huge fan of that. Piggybacking on that is the Wings for Val Foundation. So every year we go to WAI and offer a scholarship in honor of our friend and fellow jet pilot Val Delaney, who we lost too soon in a training mishap. She was a prowler pilot out of Washington State, and we were just devastated to lose her, but her living legacy is this scholarship program that young girls and women can experience the joy of flight and pursue a career in aviation, and just keep her legacy life. Alex Dietrich: There’s one other program I want to put out there, because it’s another great scholarship aviation opportunity for young folks, and that’s my Illinois Math and Science Academy friend and classmate, Kenyatta Ruffin, founded the Legacy Flight Academy, and legacy is referring to the legacy of the Tuskegee airmen, so those men who served in World War II in a segregated squadron, because they were African-American, but they served bravely, and with honor, and they made a significant difference in the course of our tactical advantage in the war. And so this program provides, it’s like a summer camp for underserved communities, for youth to come out, and again, experience aviation, and see the potential, if it’s something that they would like to pursue. And so it gives them that opportunity, and that’s called Legacy Flight Academy. Chitra Ragavan: Now you’re also an award-winning instructor with the Naval ROTC, you’ve been a permanent military instructor at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, you’re teaching leadership and ethics. What’s the core message that you try to instill in your students? Alex Dietrich: I have been teaching for the last 10 years, and I’m just in awe of this next generation. I have a lot of friends and older family members who say, “What’s going on with kids these days? The millennial generation,” and actually we’re onto generation Z, we’re actually even past millennials now in terms of who’s in school and who’s graduating right now. And I just am inspired by them. I’m not frustrated or annoyed with them at all, I think that they’re different, they’re not better or worse, they’re different in their motivation and in their communication style, and all of that. But I’m just in all of their ability to really think critically about the issues at hand, and their ability to organize and just leverage the technology that we, as a gen Xer, or my boomer dad right now, I was trying to help him get his internet set up here. Alex Dietrich: We’re in good hands with this next generation, and so I’m just trying to get out of their way as an educator and instructor, and to reassure them that they can be the leaders of the next generation, and they don’t have to fall into the trap of hero worship, or the great man theory of looking at history for World War II, Korea, Vietnam heroes to worship or emulate. Thank you gentlemen for your service, but really the futures is cyber. The future is counter-insurgency, the future is a very different battlefield, and it’s going to take a different kind of leader and operator, and technical and tactical expertise, and the kids are all raised there. They’re rising to that challenge, and they have what it takes, and they just need to be encouraged and supported on that path, and not shamed or belittled for the quirks that make them their own generation, that they have their own identity. Chitra Ragavan: Looking back at the young woman that you were, who took our first flight on 9/11, who became one of the nation’s first female strike fighter aviators, a seasoned operator who fought for her country, teacher, mentor. What would you say, looking back, to that young woman about the journey that you’ve been on, Alex? Alex Dietrich: I would say, find a mentor at each phase along the way. I think it took me a while to figure that out, how important mentorship was. I would say, keep an open mind, and keep your sense of humor. I think that that’s really gotten me through some tough times and some challenging choppy waters is being able to laugh and find humor, even in the darkest hours, because otherwise you just go crazy. Chitra Ragavan: In addition to everything else, you’re also a mom, and you’ve been through this past year of COVID pandemic. Have you had any, what I call, viral insights in the wake of COVID-19, that moment of clarity brought upon by a crisis? Alex Dietrich: Yeah, so this past year has really emphasized the importance of making sure your priorities are straight, and of prioritizing your connections. I know that we were cut off from our village, with three small children, and everyone says it takes a village to raise kids, but when you cut off from them, you appreciate how much did that village matters. And so that, and then friends and family, the really important relationships that in 2019, you might’ve said, “Oh, I’ll get around to calling that person,” or “I’ll get around to visiting that person.” In 2020 when you couldn’t, when travel was restricted and physical contact was limited, you really realized how much you take those relationships for granted, and that you should reach out and prioritize friends and family, and who is important to you, when you can, before it’s too late, before you can’t. Chitra Ragavan: Alex, thank you so much for joining me on When it Mattered, and for sharing your amazing and inspiring story. Alex Dietrich: Thank you. I wish you the best, and stay safe. Chitra Ragavan: Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich served as an F/A-18F strike fighter pilot from the VFA-41 “Black Aces” of Lemoore, California. She recently retired from the US Navy after having logged over 1,250 hours and 375 carrier arrested landings. Lieutenant Commander Dietrich served two combat deployments, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Her last deployment was a year long boots on ground deployment as a provincial reconstruction team engineer in Ghazni Afghanistan. Dietrich has now retired from active duty, and serving at the National Center for Atmospheric Research on their talent learning and development team, with a mission of science and service to society. She continues to mentor young aviators, especially women and minorities, through programs, including her Alma mater, the Illinois Math and Science Academy, the Legacy Flight Academy, and Wings for Val, Women in Aviation International. This is When it Mattered, I’m Chitra Raghavan.

Ep. 54 — How writing a best-selling book on the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic positioned this author to become a prescient thought leader on the COVID-19 pandemic / John M. Barry, Author, Distinguished Scholar, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. John Barry remembers the exact moment he gave up his boyhood dream of doing medical research for his other boyhood dream of writing. He was 13 years old and had returned from summer camp eager to examine some bacteria cultures he had grown and left in the freezer, only to find them gone. Little did he know it at the time, but after a long detour away from his childhood love for medical research, Barry would write an award winning book on science and medicine called, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. The acclaimed book, which he dreaded writing because of its complexity, positioned Barry to give timely history, context and framing for the COVID-19 pandemic when it exploded on the world stage last year. The crisis of pandemics and how to deal with them would largely take over Barry’s life. Don’t miss my fascinating conversation with John M. Barry, prize winning and New York Times bestselling author of six books, two of which, The Great Influenza and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, have pulled Barry into various policy advising roles with state, federal, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water related disasters, and risk communication. Barry is currently a distinguished scholar at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: John Barry remembers the exact moment he gave up his boyhood dream of doing medical research for his other boyhood dream of writing. He was 13 years old and had returned from summer camp eager to examine some bacteria cultures he had grown and left in the freezer, only to find it gone. Chitra Ragavan: Hello, everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups with strategic brand positioning and narrative. Little did he know it at the time, but after a long detour away from his childhood love for medical research, Barry would write an award-winning book on science and medicine called, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Chitra Ragavan: The acclaimed book positioned him to give timely history, context, and framing for the COVID-19 pandemic when it exploded on the world stage last year. The crisis of pandemics and how to deal with them would largely take over Barry’s life. I’m joined now by John M. Barry, prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of six books, two of which, The Great Influenza and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, have pulled Barry into various policy advising roles with state, federal, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water related disasters, and risk communication. Chitra Ragavan: Barry is currently a distinguished scholar at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. John, welcome to the podcast. John M. Barry: Thanks for having me. Chitra Ragavan: You were pretty serious about medical research even when you were 11. How did that start? John M. Barry: I was just fascinated by it. I was one of those kids that had a lab in their home. I actually had a pretty good quality though ancient microscope. It had lights, lens, and things like that, an expensive microscope. Grew my own media, agar-agar, and all these dyes. I was playing with E. coli, which can kill you, but seemed pretty tame because I could use that in my school class. I figured if it was in school, it wasn’t very exciting. I sent away to the American Bacteriological Supply House in Washington, DC. John M. Barry: I actually remember the company’s name, it doesn’t exist anymore, and asked for some staphylococcus aureus. Of course, today if you did that, you’d be all sorts of… Chitra Ragavan: You get a knock on the door from the FBI. John M. Barry: Yeah, they figured anybody who ask for it must be qualified to use, so they sent it to me. I had fun growing that and playing with it and so forth and so on and went away to camp. It came dehydrated in a vial. I hadn’t used all of it. I put what was left in the freezer so that I could reconstitute my cultures when I returned from camp. When I came back, I opened the freezer and asked my parents, “Where’s my staph?” They explained that their friend, a physician, a family physician, they had mentioned it to him and he said, “Are you nuts?” John M. Barry: He threw it out and then wrote a blistering letter to the company that had sent it to me so they’d never send me anything again. I was really furious. I’m still mad about it as a matter of fact. I was as angry as you can get when you’re 13 years old, which is pretty, pretty angry. I had always been torn between a desire to write and a desire to do medical research. At that moment in time, I actually said, “Okay, I’m done with the research. I’m going to be a writer.” John M. Barry: As you said in the introduction, eventually I did write about science, although I don’t consider myself primarily a science writer. I have several books that are, I guess, fairly technical. Chitra Ragavan: But it would be a while before you fulfilled your dream of becoming a writer. You did history, I guess, in graduate school and then dropped out and became a football coach. First of all, why history? And then why did you drop out of college and start focusing on football? John M. Barry: Well, history is pretty easy. To answer both questions, it’s pretty easy. I think history encompasses every field of both human endeavor and natural events. It seemed to be the best way to try to understand the world. In terms of football, I love the game. I wasn’t very good at it as a player. I sat on the bench in college in a poor team in the Ivy League, so it wasn’t exactly big time football. I was kind of frustrated by that experience. I didn’t want to leave the game that way. John M. Barry: As you said, I did drop out of grad school in history. I was pursuing a PhD and did coach for a few years. I never intended to do that for the rest of my life. Chitra Ragavan: But it would lead you to writing because your first piece was sold to a coaching magazine and I guess you went from there to journalism, right? And then to writing your book. John M. Barry: Well, that’s true. I wouldn’t say exactly that it led me to writing. Actually the first three stories that I ever got published or paid for were all in a magazine called Scholastic Coach. One was about a system to change your blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage, one was maximizing the use of the tight end, and one was about off season training. I already was attempting to write. As you say, I did end up covering national politics and economic policy in Washington DC for not quite 10 years. John M. Barry: Left a job on a magazine to finish my first book, which was on politics called The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington, and then never went back to a regular job after that. Chitra Ragavan: Wow, that’s amazing. What led you to write The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History? I mean, tell us briefly what the book is about and how you decided to write it? You weren’t particularly interested in writing it in the beginning. John M. Barry: No, I actually planned to write a book on the homefront World War I culminating in the events of 1919, which I consider one of the most interesting years in American history. A lot of things happened in 1919 and during the war, of course. But the way I conceived that book, I thought it would take me at least seven years to write. I live entirely on my writing, which means an advance… If you say it all at once, the amount of money needed to live decently for seven years plus paid research expenses, that sounds like a lot of money. John M. Barry: That book idea I didn’t think was going to generate that kind of an advance, so I thought I could write a book on the pandemic in at most two and a half years and probably less than that. It would subsidize the larger book. I got what’s a pretty hefty advance for a book you could write in two years. Unfortunately, the influenza book ended up taking me seven years. The same amount of money divided by seven is a lot less than when it’s divided by two. I was kind of looking at life like a graduate student almost. John M. Barry: I was pretty old to be doing that toward the end of that book. It was not a labor of love. At the beginning, for the first five and a half years, I wanted to throw the whole thing out practically every day and abandon it. But a character in the book, Oswald Avery, actually get me inspired, his persistence, and he’s probably the single person most deserving of the Nobel Prize who never won it. He was being considered for the Nobel Prize for his lifelong contribution to immunology when he came out with the paper that said DNA carried the genetic code, which was extremely controversial at the time. John M. Barry: Since most people didn’t believe that he was right, so they didn’t give him the prize. Of course, he was right. In the book, I quote about five or six Nobel laureates including Jim Watson, Peter Medawar, Salvador Luria, Macfarlane Burnet, all saying Avery was key. He basically launched the entire field of molecular biology, but he never got the prize. At any rate, Avery struggled with that paper for 25 years trying to solve the problem, which ended up in that conclusion. And knowing what he went through, it did kind of keep me going. John M. Barry: As I said, for five and a half years, it was hell almost every day, but it then came together in the last year and a half. Things worked out pretty well and obviously the book fortunately. I’m quite proud of it. Both in the scientific community and commercially it did pretty well. Chitra Ragavan: It had all kinds of good ramifications for you. It kind of pulled you into the policy world, didn’t it? John M. Barry: It did. It came out by coincidence a year after SARS. Right around the time, H5N1, so-called bird flu surfaced. After, of course, 9/11, and the Bush administration was very concerned about pandemic preparedness. I’ve been told by many people in positions to know that the book was actually useful in terms of actually getting a $7 billion piece of legislation passed for preparedness. In fact, Secretary of HHS Mike Lovett apparently read portions of it to a handful of key senators in a meeting. John M. Barry: They went out the next day and took over the floor, so I’ve been told quite recently by a pretty senior person who was there. Chitra Ragavan: You scared the heck out of them. John M. Barry: Apparently. Anyway, at the same time, a lot of the planning was based on analyzing what happened in 1918. And since I knew about that, I was asked to get involved in the early days of those planning meetings, sort of conceptualizing how to respond to a pandemic. It was intellectually challenging and fun. I enjoyed it. I was very happy to participate in that and been involved in that issue ever since really. Chitra Ragavan: The timing and the sense of historic context must have been quite eerie for you when you started to see COVID-19 evolve. What were your thoughts when you first started reading about it? Did you start to make those connections between all of the things you had written about with The Great Influenza and what you were seeing emerging with COVID-19? John M. Barry: Yeah, they’re hard miss really. I mean, there are a lot of differences. There are also a tremendous number of similarities. Understanding what had happened the way the virus in 1918 had moved, it did I think give me some help in understanding what might happen this time. Even in January of 2020, it seemed apparent to me that that virus was going to be a pandemic. COVID-19 would be a pandemic. I wrote a piece of work entitled, This Virus Cannot Be Contained, which ran in January in The Washington Post. John M. Barry: It just seemed so obvious. I couldn’t understand why other people weren’t seeing it. I mean, obviously some were, but too many weren’t. Based on what happened in 1918, I guessed in April I wrote another piece saying that summer was not going to provide relief. I think the virus is a seasonal virus, but in that under normal circumstances, summer does help contain the virus. Heat and humidity and so forth, the virus doesn’t do that well as it does in other temperatures. But so much of the population in the United States during the summer was still susceptible. John M. Barry: I thought that was much more important than the fact that the temperature was going up. Unfortunately, that prediction proved true. That was based on historical evaluation. The so-called, the social distancing, the hand washing, ventilation, all those things were used in 1918. Analyses of cities that did more of them, did them earlier, and so forth demonstrated that they were effective somewhat at any rate in 1918. I mean, models suggest they did as well, but having that historical precedent, all those things combined to make them the policy of the preparedness plans. John M. Barry: Of course, you got to execute the policies. I think the single biggest lesson coming out of 1918, however, was that you need to tell the truth. If you’re going to get the public to comply with your recommendations, they have to want to comply. They’re not going to go ahead to do that unless they believe you. The truth is absolutely crucial to get that public acceptance. Chitra Ragavan: And that wasn’t happening for a while. John M. Barry: Not in the United States. There obviously are countries around the world where that worked very well. A lot of countries have been very much more successful than the United States. Some of them have all but eliminated the virus. Their containment has been extraordinary. A lot of countries have done better than the United States, most of them frankly, and a few have done even worse. But I think if you look across borders, the ones that have done well that were not totalitarian countries have told the truth. John M. Barry: That was very important as part of their plan. Transparency is very high in the pandemic preparedness plan that was prepared by the United States. Very high priority. The highest priority really. It’s the same in every state plan all of which are modeled after the federal plan. But as a football coach would say, you got to execute, and we didn’t execute. Chitra Ragavan: You’ve been doing a lot of public speaking. You’ve been writing on this. You’ve been educating people at all levels, and you’ve been doing a bit of policy work as well advising the administrations on this. Tell us a little bit about some of that work has been doing and has your message been heard. John M. Barry: Well, not this administration. But the Bush administration, yeah, I did get pretty involved. We’ve already talked about the preparation of… I mean, the whole planning process and development of policy over how to deal with the pandemic. In 2009, I got pretty involved, not in an official way I guess, but pretty involved with their response from the Obama administration to H1N1, the so-called swine flu. Some people on the national security council and I are pretty friendly and we would talk quite often. John M. Barry: One thing that was interesting back then was scientists around the world were sending me fairly significant information, and I would forward that to my friends in the White House. They are pretty busy. At one point, I was asking them did they want me to keep sending this stuff because it takes time to open an email and was it worth it. They responded, “Oh yes, please do,” because I was giving them information that they were not getting through official channels for weeks sometimes, whereas I was giving it to them in real time. John M. Barry: Those official channels are not always very good movers of information. I think we’ve discovered that again this time the way information has flowed to the World Health Organization from China, for example. Not exactly timely and not exactly with total candor, so-called transparency. I don’t really like the word transparency, but everybody else seems to use it, so I guess I might as well. Chitra Ragavan: You’re a New Orleans resident. You’ve experienced the violence and destruction of Katrina, and you’ve also been deeply involved in water issues and policy making around flood protection. That rose in part out of your third book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. How did that work that you did on Katrina come about? John M. Barry: Well, the Rising Tide was about a flood that nobody ever heard of really in 1927. The Mississippi River was the biggest disaster in American history, natural disaster in American history. It flooded just about 1% of the entire population of the country. It killed people from Virginia to Oklahoma all of which is in the Mississippi River basin. It elected Hoover president. It changed the way people thought about the federal government and its responsibilities toward individual citizens. John M. Barry: In terms of percentage of GDP, it was five times the impact of Hurricane Sandy and significantly larger than the impact of Katrina. A huge event, even though most people unless they lived close to the Mississippi River never heard of it. That book did come out. That also fortunately won some awards. In Louisiana, it was a huge bestseller. Nationally it wasn’t quite as big, although it did actually make the bestseller list. I was pretty well-known in Louisiana. John M. Barry: After the storm, the congressional delegation and bipartisan based asked me to chair a working group on flood protection. Then the state passed a constitutional amendment to create a new levee board for Metro New Orleans. I was asked to serve on that, which I did. This was an extraordinary board. Levee boards normally are highly political and they spend some money, so they had resources. But they were all localized. Whereas we had on it from California, the head of flood plan management for the State of California who had before that been the chief engineer for California’s levee system. John M. Barry: We had from North Carolina, the chair of National Academies of Sciences working group on coastal risk reduction. We had the past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers who happened to be local in New Orleans. Had a guy who wrote college textbooks on engineering. This was really an extraordinary board. We were determined to try to protect the city as well as we could. Louisiana has lost 2,000 square miles of land. Coastal Louisiana just melted into the ocean. That’s bigger than the State of Delaware. John M. Barry: One of the main causes of this was oil and gas production in the coastal lands. Those lands serve as a buffer. If you put the State of Delaware between New Orleans and the ocean, you wouldn’t need any levies at all. While our primary task for this board was to try to oversee the new levee system that was being built to make sure that it was done properly and make some suggestion where possible or where needed, because I hope your listeners understand, just to back up for a second. John M. Barry: The levee system that existed before Katrina was designed to hold a storm like Katrina. It should have held that storm. The levees that flooded the city, they’re actually flood walls, not levees technically. They were not overtopped. The water never came within two feet of the top of those levees. They just collapsed because they were not well-designed. We wanted to make sure that things were done right. But looking out to the longer term to protect the city, we recognized that we had to restore some of that land that was lost. John M. Barry: That’s very expensive. The oil industry by its own studies is responsible for roughly a third of the land loss. Other people think it’s a lot higher, but the industry’s own studies put it at a third. We did something extremely controversial in the state of Louisiana. We filed a lawsuit against 97 oil and gas and pipeline companies seeking their help in restoring this land. It did spark quite a political battle in the state legislature and gubernatorial campaigns and things like that. John M. Barry: It’s kind of interesting. Our case was dismissed. We did take it to the Supreme Court. We never got to trial. It was dismissed beforehand, and the claim was that we didn’t have standing to file the lawsuit. However, we did spark lawsuits by several parishes, counties, we call counties parishes in Louisiana, which explicitly do have standing in the law and a whole host of private land owner lawsuits. All of those are preceding. There has been a settlement in theory worked out between one company, Freeport-McMoRan, and the parishes. John M. Barry: That requires legislation and all sorts of things to go forward before that settlement can be truly worked out. It’s not clear whether that will be resolved. And if so, whether it will be a model for the other companies that would have to come forward with a lot more money than Freeport-McMoRan has agreed to do. Chitra Ragavan: I guess your popularity as a writer was a little bit offset by your lack of popularity as somebody who’s suing 97 oil, gas, and pipeline companies. John M. Barry: I don’t know. I was accused in fact in the state legislature of filing the lawsuit for the sole purpose of having a book to write about. They actually said that. I was just trying to look for a subject. West Virginia and coal. Louisiana and oil. There used to be a saying that the flag of Texaco flies atop the state capitol in Louisiana. Of course, Texaco doesn’t exist anymore. Part of Exxon, I guess, or Chevron rather. Chitra Ragavan: I guess you live in the French Quarter, right, in New Orleans. I mean, between Katrina and COVID-19 shutting down all the restaurants and bars and music and culture, you’ve seen it all, haven’t you? What was that like to see all of that unfold? John M. Barry: Well, obviously pretty depressing. In Katrina, we had water in our street, but it didn’t get above the curb. Of course, I have friends who lost everything, so I had survivor guilt. The French Quarter was a desolate place a year ago at this time. There’s a hotel next to me that had its very depressing large driveway. They put plywood over the driveway. Normally it’s so active down here. You see nothing. Probably everybody listening can remember pictures of Beijing with these massive road systems that are about 12 or 14 lanes wide that don’t have anything moving on it. John M. Barry: That was kind of like the French Quarter in New Orleans. My wife and I would walk around every day. There was one guy that used to play bagpipes a few blocks away. That’s a pretty haunting sound. Of course, everyone has gone through something like that in the past year. Not fun. Chitra Ragavan: What do you think is going to happen next? Are we actually going to be able to open? You’re seeing all these variants. There’s this kind of struggle politically and socially and culturally between opening up, should we open up. We have to mask. We have to get vaccinated. What’s your prediction knowing everything you know about these things? John M. Barry: Well, I do follow it pretty closely. I’m writing a book about it. I knew several members of Biden’s advisory committee. A couple of them are friends. I knew a couple of others. So I’m reasonably plugged in. The variants are a real concern, but I’m optimistic. In 1918, there was a first wave that was not at all lethal. I’ll give you one example. There were 40,000 French soldiers hospitalized, sick enough to be hospitalized. Fewer than a hundred died. John M. Barry: That’s pretty mild, particularly back then when you didn’t have any antibiotics and really not a lot of things you could do in terms of medical care. That virus mutated. The other thing about that first wave was it was not particularly… I mean, it was contagious, sure, but it had a tendency to peter out not nearly as contagious as it became. A variant of that initial virus emerged. And when it did, it was highly contagious and it also was much more lethal, much deadlier. John M. Barry: That’s sort of what’s happening now. Fortunately it’s nothing like the difference in 1918, but these new variants, they are significantly more transmissible. The original wild virus was extraordinarily transmissible. Much more transmissible than influenza. Influenza is seasonal. Influenza has a reproductive number of about 1.28. 1918 was probably about 1.8, and the initial virus of SARS‑CoV‑2 was 2.5 to 3. That’s much more transmissible than influenza, much more transmissible than the 1918 pandemic. John M. Barry: The variants are roughly 50% more transmissible than the original wild virus. The real concern is that they… Well, that’s a pretty big concern just the numbers. But in addition, they are more lethal. Not like the difference between 1918, between the first and second wave, which were orders of magnitude, but there was a study saying that the B117, the UK variant, was I think the number was 64% more lethal than the virus that it replaced. The other variants, the numbers aren’t really clear, but they seem also to be more deadly than the virus that they are replacing. John M. Barry: It’s not an order of magnitude higher as 1918 was, but it’s worrisome. They do seem to be vulnerable to the vaccine, all of the variants. My real concern is the variants that we have not seen yet. The possibility that a really nasty version of SARS‑CoV‑2 could be out there and could develop. Obviously we have some very effective vaccines. I’ll give you a sense of just how effective. The best influenza vaccine we ever had was 62% effective. You were 62% less likely to get the disease. Normally they’re about 40% effective for influenza. John M. Barry: These vaccines came in at the 90% level. Even ones that are a little bit less, the 70% level, and they’ve all proven to be 100% effective in preventing severe disease defined as admission to an ICU. It might even be half. I’ve got the precise definition. Everybody listening, if you’ve listened to this and you’re probably interested in COVID, and then you know we are in a race to get enough people vaccinated before the variants really take hold and spread widely and also to prevent the emergence of a really nasty variant. John M. Barry: I do think we are in the United States just about dead even with the variants, maybe slightly ahead. We have a chance of winning that race in the United States. If we do that, if a really nasty variant doesn’t emerge, then I would think you’re going to have a lot of football stadiums with some pretty big crowds in the fall. But worldwide, the virus is going to be continue to be in check. It is possible you get a really nasty version of it that emerges somewhere, or it could emerge in the United States. John M. Barry: It could emerge anywhere, or it may never emerge. But it’s not over yet. It’s certainly in the self-interest of ourselves to make sure that the rest of the world gets plenty of vaccine and gets it fast. Chitra Ragavan: In wrapping up, John, looking back at that 13-year old boy back from camp, angry at having lost his culture that he was looking forward to playing with and deciding to become a writer on the spot and looking back at your rich career since as a historian, coach, influenza and pandemic expert, environmental activist, policy advisor, what would you say to that 13-year old about the incredible journey that you’ve been on? John M. Barry: I’m not very clever. Just keep on trucking. Do what interests you and what you’re curious about and what drives you. Hardly an original thought, but it’s not so much pursue your dream, but work hard and have a goal and pursue it. Chitra Ragavan: Do you have any what I call “viral insights” in the wake of COVID-19, that moment of clarity brought upon by a crisis? John M. Barry: Not really. I guess a moment of clarity is more a moment of incomprehensibility. What’s so overwhelming in this whole thing is the incompetence of the response of the Trump administration. Everybody in public health, everybody who knows anything about pandemics is so frustrated, furious, depressed, because there are hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who should be alive. Practically on a daily basis, you just shake your head in disbelief over how poorly this was handled in the United States. John M. Barry: Nobody that I know of in the community ever imagined something like a mask could be politicized. Could we imagine that some people wouldn’t want to wear them? Yes. But could we imagine that it would be part of a partisan political fight? No. That’s sort of the clearest that comes through whenever I think of COVID-19 is that so many hundreds of thousands of people in this country should be alive who are dead. Chitra Ragavan: John, thank you so much for joining me on When It Mattered. John M. Barry: Thank you. Chitra Ragavan: John M. Barry is a prize winning and acclaimed New York Times bestselling author whose books have won multiple awards. His books include The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. Barry’s writing has received not only a slew of major awards, but less formal recognition as well. A 2004 GQ named Rising Tide one of nine pieces of writing essential to understanding America. Chitra Ragavan: That list also included Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address and Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Barry’s first book, The Ambition and the Power, A True Story of Washington, was cited by The New York Times as one of the 11 best books ever written about Washington and the congress. His book, The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, co-authored with Dr. Steve Rosenberg was published in 12 languages. Chitra Ragavan: And a story about football that he wrote was selected for inclusion in an anthology of the best football writing of all time published in 2006 by Sports Illustrated. You can read more about John Barry and his incredible body of work at johnmbarry dot com. This is When It Matters. I’m Chitra Ragavan.

Ep.53 — A journalist upends her life and career to help identify and bring to justice the network of militants who murdered her friend and fellow correspondent at The Wall Street, Daniel Pearl / Asra Nomani, journalist, author, activist and co-founder, The Pearl Project. On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, Daniel Pearl, a correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, to return from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl’s killers and help bring them to justice. In this riveting episode, Nomani describes how Pearl’s murder helped shape her as a journalist, author and a feminist Muslim. And she shares how the tragedy gave her the courage to become an activist challenging the rise of Islamic extremism and what she perceives as the dangerous influence of Islamists in American politics — particularly on the Democratic Party. Nomani also discusses why she is speaking up against the growing influence of “critical race theory,” both in the U.S. public school systems and on American society as a whole. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, The Wall Street Journal correspondent, Daniel Pearl to come back from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Danny Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl’s killers and help bring them to justice. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory an advisory firm helping technology startups with strategic brand positioning and narrative. I’m joined now by Asra Nomani. She’s a journalist, author, activist and co-founder of The Pearl Project, a 31,000 word award-winning global investigative journalism report identifying the network of militants who perpetrated the heinous. Asra, welcome to the podcast. Asra Nomani: Oh, thank you so much, Chitra. I feel like I’m with such a good dear friend going into one of the darkest moments of my life, but I hope we can share some light with everyone. Chitra Ragavan: It’s been 19 years, almost exactly two days shy of that fateful day, January 23rd, 2002, when your world and that of Danny Pearl and his whole family turned upside down. Tell me when you found out that something had badly gone wrong. Asra Nomani: Well, that day began like any other day for journalists in, posting overseas. We all wakened, Danny and his wife Mariane were visiting a house that I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan. And Danny, went about the business of all his flurry of interviews he had planned for the day. I found a car for him and we stood outside this home that I’d rented and waved goodbye to Danny. And I said, “See you later, buddy,” because it was just an interview like any other that we go off to do and then come back home and write down our notes and write our dispatches. But that night, Mariane kept calling and calling Danny’s phone number and he never picked up. We just kept hearing this operator that said, “The call couldn’t go through.” Chitra Ragavan: And when did you realize something was wrong? Asra Nomani: So we had a dinner plan that night and we’d gone off to get all of the preparations. I had ordered beer because Danny enjoyed his beer. We’d called a bootlegger whose number I had gotten. And everybody had dinner, the folks that we had invited, but nobody was answering Danny’s phone. He was never answering. So at 10:00 finally, Mariane and I went and sat in front of Danny’s computer, went into his inbox, didn’t password protective it. And there I saw the email from the young man who had set up the interview. That’s when I just knew something was wrong because the email address was nobadmashi@yahoo.com. Chitra Ragavan: And why were you concerned by the email address, “nobadmashi?” Asra Nomani: So Chitra, you know your Bollywood movies? You know what a badmash is, right? Chitra Ragavan: A rascal? Asra Nomani: Yeah. A rascal. So why would anybody in their right mind write, norascal@yahoo.com as they’re setting up a legit interview with a sheikh cleric? And I just knew that something was wrong because nobody would write that. The badmaash is the bad guy in every Bollywood movie. And I just felt and knew in my heart that Danny had walked into trouble. Chitra Ragavan: Now, you yourself were in a foreign land. You’re also an American journalist. You are a writer working on a book project in Karachi. So when this crisis began to unfold, you yourself weren’t really in a great position to know what to do and to respond. I mean, what did you do next and how did you even know what to do? What was that like, that moment? Asra Nomani: Oh my gosh. It was so clarifying. I wish for no one a January 23rd, 2002 moment, but that was the moment when I was trying to find every bit of courage and capacity and capability within myself to try to save Danny. And so, what I knew how to do as a journalist was investigate. So immediately I got on the phone with other journalists to find out if they knew who this Sheikh [Mubarak Ali] Gilani was that Danny was about to meet. I found out then that another journalist locally had gone missing. I called relatives that I have in Pakistan. I called sources. Asra Nomani: And through the night we worked at, called the consulate, called The Wall Street journal office. Did everything that’s like old school reporting, called trusted people, called the neighbor, went over right next door to the neighbor when she awakened for the dawn prayer and begged people to help. And it was just a response like I never would have ever imagined. Everywhere I turned they said they couldn’t get involved. Chitra Ragavan: Were they afraid? Asra Nomani: They were all afraid. And that was the moment when I really realized what happens in a society to the citizenry when you don’t have a rule of law, when you can’t trust the police, when you have an intelligence agency that you’re afraid will come knocking on your door, they were all afraid to get involved. And finally, we got the police and two police officers came. A guy that we called Captain and then another police officer named “Dost”, which means friend, as you might know, in Urdu. And so, we got them, the house was overrun with police officers and intelligence agents. Asra Nomani: And the other thing that I had to do, Chitra, that I bet you can connect with is, I was born in India and I was born into a script, right, for many women and many girls in our culture. When I was literally eight-years-old growing up, I went back to India and a cousin of mine had written into my autograph book “silence is golden” because we were to be good girls. Right? We were supposed to tow the line, don’t challenge authority. And of course, I became a journalist and I learned how to raise questions. But in my own culture, I still thought that I had to tow the line. I got to wear my proper salwar kameez the long tunic and the baggy pants, wear my dupatta, the scarf over my head when I talked to the religious leaders. Asra Nomani: And at that moment, January 23rd, 2002, it was like all of the voices inside of my head that told me to be quiet or tow the line, just went out the window because I was laser-focused that I had to do everything that I possibly could to save Danny. And so, Mariane and I would joke, we had these boots that I had gotten to go hiking through Tora Bora to find Osama bin Laden. And every morning then I would lace up those boots, we called them our jihadi boots because we were on a jihad or a struggle for truth and for finding Danny. And there was no more compromise on my identity, no more second guessing myself, no voice within my head telling me to be quiet because I had to do everything strategically and intelligently to try to save Danny. Chitra Ragavan: So, all of your efforts though were unsuccessful, when did you find out his fate? Asra Nomani: Five weeks then into the search for Danny, all of a sudden I couldn’t get any of the police officers or the U.S. Consulate officials that had been a phone call away, they’d all disappeared. And I just didn’t know where they were so Mariane and I laced up our boots. We walked to my front door and that exact moment standing at the door, as I opened it were the Pakistani police officers and the U.S. Officials and the FBI agents. Asra Nomani: And Chitra, oh my gosh, these were grown men who would have seen the darkest of the dark. And they just stood there, just their faces is crestfallen, as if they had seen a ghost, as if they had seen the worst of the worst. And they had. That’s the moment when this police officer named Captain looked at Mariane and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t bring your Danny home.” Chitra Ragavan: And what had they, had they seen the video? What was it that made them look like ghosts? Asra Nomani: So that night, the FBI agents and Pakistani police officers had gotten a video and they had watched this video. That was the “slaughter” of the journalist Daniel Pearl. And in that video was documented Danny’s last words. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish. And then those horrible, horrible last seconds. So in that video then, they documented the Knife being put to Danny’s neck and his head being severed and held then by his killer as if it was some great prize in this jihad that the militants had launched upon with Danny as their victim. Chitra Ragavan: What was the reaction on your physical on mental health and emotional health and that of Mariane’s? And how did you recover from it in the coming weeks? And what actions did you take after you learned of the video? Asra Nomani: I really had never, ever understood trauma. I didn’t understand the reactions that our body and our minds have to trauma, but I immediately, I did learn that there is no atheist in a foxhole. And I sat outside Mariane’s bedroom saying my Muslim prayer for protection for her and her baby in her belly, because poor Mariane, rushed into her room and you just had a blood curdling scream, like I’ll never forget. Of course, as the world knows, as everybody knows, this was the worst, the worst, the worst of humanity. And I learned that our brains feel this tragedy and trauma and then something happens also to have us survive. Because even now 19 years later, I cannot even believe that this happened and that this is true. Asra Nomani: And I learned in those moments afterwards and the days afterwards and the months and years, honestly, afterwards, I learned that we hope by doing this thing that’s called dissociation, separating our own, our own minds and thoughts and brains from the horror of a trauma. And on one level it’s hoping and it’s healthy. And in another, you have to be careful because it can remove you from the emotion and tragedy of grief, which was some of my challenge. But oh man, Chitra, literally going into the abyss and figuring out how you will ever emerge again, that’s what those moments and days were like. Chitra Ragavan: And your life was further complicated. I mean, you’re a Muslim woman but a non-traditional one. You were married once in the US very briefly, divorced very quickly. And so, you were in Karachi, a single Muslim woman with a boyfriend when Danny was kidnapped and murdered. And then even as you were finding out the terrible news about him, you also, were about to get some very personal health information about yourself. Tell me about that. Asra Nomani: Yes. In the fourth week trying to find Danny, before we knew his fate, I realized that something was awry with my body. And I got in a car with police protection and went to the 24-hour pharmacy across the street from the Karachi Sheraton and got not just one pregnancy test but a few. Returned back to my home and there took one test after the next, with each one coming back positive for being pregnant. And it was shocking to me because this wasn’t my plan. This was not what I was expecting in this struggle to try to just find my friend. Asra Nomani: And there we were now, two pregnant women under one roof. I also I had this realization, I knew, I mean, the extremism problem in Pakistan is rooted in a very ultra-Orthodox fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that also says that a woman is illegal or criminal if she’s had sex outside of marriage. And in the case of pregnancy, your own baby can be used as evidence against you. And so, I just thought, “Oh my gosh, what am I to do?” So we kept it a secret. I found a doctor quietly, but I was afraid that even my blood tests would be used as evidence against me. And so, there was this secret, this fear. Asra Nomani: And then on top of it, then when I told my boyfriend, he just bailed on me because he was already afraid of Pakistani Intelligence, and now to get wrapped up in this soap opera, forget it. And so then, a week later we learned that Danny had been murdered. I just don’t know, you don’t know sort of the, you can have different levels of feeling, spiritual, religious or not. Just as if life came to me as a way, as a course for me to survive and to live in the midst of that darkness. So this was the double experience that I was having, to process and figure out answers for this brutal, brutal murder of dear Danny, and then this question within me of what to do with this life within me. Chitra Ragavan: So what did you do next? How did the Pearl Project come about? Asra Nomani: Well, I chose life because I had amazing, and I have amazing, amazing parents. They are conservative, but they are humanists. And when my mother learned that I was pregnant, she said, “You must have this baby.” And my father, oh my gosh, my father sent me an email, literally, just that said, I love you. Because you know, dads, and I know your dad loved technology, too. And yeah, my dad used an email to communicate that unconditional love that’s so important. So I chose life. I chose to come back to America to raise my son as a single mom with my parents support. I had him in my hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia, where I’m talking to you from today. And I tell you, I had my first birthday party for Shibli, that’s my son’s name. Asra Nomani: And then, like, the second one. And I chose to live, I chose to live and raise him with love and truth and honesty. But there is this question, all these questions still lingering about poor Danny’s murder. There was a network of people who were involved in propping him, and there were so many questions about how they worked, how they operated and I had to get the answers. And so The Pearl Project began as a investigation at Georgetown University with students, to find the truth left behind on the streets of Karachi. Chitra Ragavan: And what was your goal? Asra Nomani: Well, the actual goal was to discover every detail in the plot to kidnap Danny, and in the captivity, the investigation, the court case, every little detail. That was the external objective, right? But clearly there was this unfinished business within me, this grief still not processed. And I came to really understand my brain a little bit more too, because not immediately, but later I knew that I had to know every little fact in order to be able to process then the grief. And that was just my path. Asra Nomani: And ultimately the external reason that just stayed with me through every moment of, and twist and turn was, just wanted to do right by Danny in terms of the truth and justice for him, so that there would be no stone unturned. And that we could send a clear message as journalists that we stand with our fellow journalists from the newsroom, that we will not allow anybody to get away with murder. And I just really felt, no, we couldn’t save Danny, but we needed to fight for the truth and for justice. Chitra Ragavan: Well, as we mentioned, this is the 19th anniversary almost to the day that we’re recording. This is January 21st, and he disappeared on January 23rd. And interestingly, there have been a lot of recent developments that are also coming to a head this coming week. Talk a little bit about that with respect to the lead culprit and the court hearings and what’s likely to unfold. Asra Nomani: Well, what we discovered was that nobadmashi@yahoo.com was an account run by this British-Pakistani young man named Omar Sheikh. And the Pakistani police successfully prosecuted him in 2002 along with three co-conspirators. That was very satisfying because this is a man who is an extremist and a danger to society, along with his co-conspirators. But as COVID was sweeping the world in April, 2020, we got this shocking news from Pakistan that judges in the Sindh High Court in Karachi, had decided that Omar Sheikh and his three co-conspirators were going to be freed from jail. Asra Nomani: But they ruled that the three co-conspirators were innocent and that Omar Sheikh was only guilty of abduction, not even kidnapping for ransom. And they ruled that it wasn’t even terrorism. So it was such a shock. It was just unbelievable, but it was just like that moment, January 23rd, 2002, when, you have to just kick into action. We learned that we have 30 days to file an appeal, that in the Pakistani courts, the victim’s family can file an appeal. And so, I talked to Danny’s dad immediately, and his sister Tamara, and they decided they were going to appeal. Asra Nomani: And we got to the business then of powers of attorney, finding a lawyer in Pakistan, filing the papers, just doing all of the work in the midst of COVID. And we did it, Chitra, we filed the appeal and that appeal has been going through the Pakistan Supreme Court for almost all these months now, right? And any day now, we’re expecting a decision. We hope, we pray that Omar Sheikh and the three co-conspirators will remain in jail. We feel confident, we hope, hope, hope that that will happen. Chitra Ragavan: And the U.S. Justice Department has raised the possibility that if Omar Sheikh is allowed to be set free, that he could potentially be brought to the U.S. and tried here, which could potentially be good news even if it falls through on the other end. Right? Asra Nomani: Yeah. They have this warning they’ve sort of issued to the government of Pakistan. A message, let’s say. That if you can’t keep Omar Sheikh in jail, we can take over the case. Because Omar Sheikh was indicted in U.S. Courts in 2002. So he could be extradited and tried in court in America. We feel like the government of Pakistan and the Supreme Court will do the right thing. They have definitely listened carefully to the arguments of the family’s lawyer, Faisal Siddiqui and the government case also. And so, we’re really hopeful that they will be able to do right for Danny, but the U.S. Government has fortunately supported the family. Chitra Ragavan: Now, in the years since Danny died, you’ve become an activist, too in addition to being a writer and a journalist. You’ve taken on the Islamic communities in the U.S. On a number of fronts notably on Islamic terrorism, extremism, the rights of Muslim women. You’ve talked openly about Muslim women and sex and other topics that were taboo. ome of your books Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. Chitra Ragavan: And Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love. You’ve written some controversial articles, including Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom and Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque. How did the events in 2002 shape you as an activist and getting in touch with your voice, and what has been some of the response to your positions and your writings? Asra Nomani: Well, I just love the concept of your podcast and the kind of reflections that you have us even think about, even that I thought about. Wondering about the issues of leadership in my life, but Chitra, there we were in the trenches, right? In this horrible, horrible moment. And I couldn’t agree to the voices in my ancestry or my upbringing that had told me to be quiet or sit in the back and stay compliant and be a good girl. And there was so much clarifying during those five weeks for me, first, I had to decide whether I was going to carry this life into the world. Was I going to defy the shame, the taboos, the laws even that criminalized bringing a baby into the world without a wedding ring? Then I realized in those weeks, extremism, what is the claim that they have on our communities? Asra Nomani: The men who dropped off the photos of Danny in captivity, had done that in a mosque in Karachi that women weren’t even allowed to enter. Well, how could that be? I knew about the extremism problem within my Muslim communities since I was a girl. Because I was born in 1965, I grew up with it through the ’70s and ’80s as Saudi Arabia and Iran were fueling it to out extreme the other country. But I never reported about it, Chitra. As a journalist, I never wrote one word about it. Danny wrote more about the extremism problem within Islam than I did. And when this happened, and I also realized the life within me was literally sacrificed in this debate. I thought, I have a obligation to speak up. And that was when I first decided to move from the news pages to the opinion pages and write columns. Asra Nomani: And my first column was about The Right of a Muslim Woman to Bring a Baby into this World, Even if she Wasn’t Married because a woman in Nigeria was about to be executed because she had had a baby outside of wedlock. And so that’s where I found, I think this concept of thought leadership, thought leadership was an idea that I never even contemplated. And then when I went to my mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia with my little baby, this elder stood in front of me and said I had to take the back door and go into this back balcony. And I wasn’t even allowed into the front room. And I thought, “Are you kidding me?” So the extremist can lay claim to our mosques and our pulpits, but I as a woman have to take the back door by the garbage can. Asra Nomani: And so, that was when I become an accidental activist. And I didn’t know how to be the kind of “leader” that galvanizes people and convinces the other women to go into the main hall with me. But I went on my own and I had my mom with me. So that was my greatest joy. My mom would literally put on this Brooklyn hoodie, it had Brooklyn across the front and she would use the hoodie as her headscarf. And she went in with me, Friday after Friday, my son on my lap. And I sat and I took notes on what these men were saying, and I took notes on their extremism and I challenged them on their orthodoxy. And of course that won me great popularity contests right, at the mosque. Not at all. Chitra Ragavan: You’ve been taking on Islamic extremism ever since Danny Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded and you’ve gotten a lot of pushback. And some even here in the U.S. In various communities have attempted to malign you as an extremist when in fact the opposite is true, and has been well-documented that you are very much against extremism. How do you counter though that kind of destructive counternarrative and keep working? Asra Nomani: Well, I became a volunteer in Morgantown for the rape and domestic violence shelter at one point. And I learned about this thing called the power and control wheel. And it is the sort of analysis of the dynamics that are used to assert power and control over women in the case of domestic violence with men. But even it can happen anywhere. It can happen men on men, women on women. And one of the mechanisms is abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, economic abuse, right? These are all the levers of power that can be asserted over somebody to get them to be compliant with authority. And so, I just started to understand the character assassination as just that, an effort to discredit me so that I’d have no authority, right, in my community. Asra Nomani: Then I followed the money, of course, the journalist in me, and I saw the trail of organizations that are in this network trying to do the bidding of governments that want the status quo to exist like governments in the Gulf countries that believe in this interpretation of Islam, and their actual, it’s been existential battle for them because that’s how they keep power and control over their people. So if you start giving women rights, if you start allowing people to speak up with ideas of free speech then they’re dictatorships are challenged. So I got to really understand that, it felt really personal but it wasn’t personal. It’s just the dynamics of power and control. Asra Nomani: And I just can’t even underestimate just how much love matters when you have battles like this because my mom was going into the mosque with me. My dad lost all his “power and control” in the community on the mosque board. They out voted him about issue of women’s rights at the mosque, but they [my parents] stood by me because they knew the clarity of the issue, right? That fundamentally, we all have to stand up against extremism and we have to stand up for human rights. And so, that’s what will always be in front of me, along with this clarity of that January 23rd moment. Asra Nomani: When I last saw this great human being, Danny Pearl, on this earth just fumbling with his notebook and his technology, getting into that cab to go off for an interview. And that’s so clarifying when people try to confuse you with all their drama and all of their name calling and death threats even, the things that are meant to get you to just go crawl into the woodwork. So that love and friendship just was clarifying to me. And made it so that even not winning any of these homecoming queen contests at the mosque, didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. There’s a bigger battle to win and still on that effort because it isn’t over yet. Chitra Ragavan: And in November, 2016, you wrote an op-ed in the Washington post saying that you, a Muslim woman, a progressive feminist, a registered Democrat had in fact cast your vote for Donald Trump. And you raised this issue of Democratic pandering in your words to Islamic extremism as one of the reasons for voting for Trump. Can you clarify a little bit what that was about? Asra Nomani: Yeah. I know it’s confusing how a Muslim feminist could vote for Donald Trump. But what had happened is that in the years before, I had seen this encroachment of the powers within my Muslim community that we call Islamists. They are the Muslims who believe in Islam, in political governance. So organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, for example. And unfortunately, they had figured out a way to connect their very illiberal ideas with the liberal establishment of the Democratic party, basically, running Muslims into a race that needed to be protected. So they would really use the minority status within United States to argue that any criticism of issues of women’s rights or extremism was Islamophobic. And I could see through it because I knew their values and their tactics, but unfortunately I was increasingly frustrated that the Democratic party was getting hijacked really by this agenda. Asra Nomani: And so, I made that really, really difficult decision to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. But the op-ed that you talk about that I wrote, I wrote it after the election. And I didn’t write it because I wanted to convince anybody to support him. I just wanted folks to understand that it was a complicated vote, those people that had voted for Trump. And I grew up in West Virginia, like I mentioned, I knew many people who voted for him here. And they weren’t just this white, trash, racist image that would then being discussed on CNN to break down who the voters were. And I really wanted to bring humanity back to the conversation, but of course, that went really well, right? Chitra Ragavan: And looking back now, though, given that he himself aroused a bunch of extremists to actually descend on the Capitol on January 6th, and the incredible impact that the devastating impact that had on U.S. Democracy. How do you what you had hoped to with what actually happened? Asra Nomani: Well, one more disappointed voter, right. I mean, I voted for former President Obama twice and was disappointed in how he handled the Islamic extremism problem. And with President Trump, former President Trump now, disappointed of course, in the way that he just couldn’t get it together. Right? Then of course, everybody saw the signs and I saw the signs. Chitra, I worked at The Wall Street Journal so I didn’t cover him, but I covered his buddies. So I knew they were what they are. The kind of rogues of Wall Street, right, that they famously had become. And it’s a shame. And still, of course, we’re also processing what happened on January 6th. Asra Nomani: The journalist in me, the human being in me, I still see the same challenge that we face as a society. That people feel any level of oh, we have to understand where Muslim extremists come from. There’s a lot of analysis in among progressive politics who understand the socioeconomic condition, the this and the that of Muslim extremists, that has to be understood to, right? About the people who decided to do this thing that we could never have imagined of, rushing the Capitol, running through the halls and with zip ties and the rest. But in both situations, the answer has to be some understanding, right? Asra Nomani: We have to get to it and then we have to it, and then we have to, just like I argue in the Muslim community, we have to challenge the extremist ideology, if it works on both sides. It works on the right. It works on the left. It works in Muslim community, Jewish, Christian, all communities. The answer still has to be the same where we have to choose a path of civility and moderation and human rights and self-determination that’s dignified, and within some high level of rule of law. And never could I have imagined too, as most of the world is reeling, that we would have faced that in America. But that is what happens when we lose control over moderation, right? And it certainly becomes the defining characteristic of society Chitra Ragavan: You’ve taken on another difficult challenge, now, countering what you believe to be toxicity of political correctness in our public school systems and the dropping of academic excellence standards by some of the most rigorous academic public schools in the country, including Thomas Jefferson High School here in Northern Virginia and even some colleges such as Harvard University, as a means to combat systemic racism. Briefly, what are your concerns about that? And what are you trying to do about it and what has been the response? Asra Nomani: Well, we’ve talked about what made me a mother, the circumstances that brought to motherhood. Well, that little boy became a student in Fairfax County, Virginia. And he like many other kids passed this test to get into Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. He was into LEGOs and robotics and I was LEGO coach. Being a single mom, I straddled all my life and work so that I could be there for him. And we got the good news one day that he was accepted into the school. And I did everything I could, right? To be able to afford to live in Fairfax County, to shuttle him to different activities, keep him on the straight and narrow. And then one day after the tragedy, tragedy of George Floyd’s killing, we got a note along with all the parents and students at TJ from our school principal. Asra Nomani: And she said that we needed to check our privileges. And I just thought, are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what any of our lives has been about? How can you sit there and lecture us about our “privileges” on what we were or we became the fodder in those new politics in K-12 Education of this ideology that’s called “critical race theory” that brings a new extremism, I would argue, to school children. And so, there is a very parallel journey that I’ve been on in trying to challenge ideology. The ideology of critical race theory is one that creates a new hierarchy of human value among people. So that at my son’s school, we’re mostly Asian and our mostly Asian families are considered “white adjacent.” And so we lose our status, “status as minorities,” as people of color because we’ve “succeeded.” But we’re complicated families. Asra Nomani: We have complicated stories, I’m first-generation post-colonial in my family from India. And so, I just couldn’t accept that kind of tyranny, honestly, and started speaking at my school board meetings. And again, it became accidental leadership and finding other families, organizing and we’ve challenged the school system in Fairfax County, Virginia. We’ve gone to school board meetings. I’ve helped parents learn to deliver three minute speeches. And we just learned today that we’ve won standing in court so that we can challenge Fairfax County’s decision to eliminate that test that my son took to get into TJ because they argue that it’s a “racist test” because we have too many underrepresented minorities from the black and Hispanic community. Asra Nomani: But our argument is the argument of the American dream, which is that we work hard. We have to make opportunities available for all people, but ultimately we shouldn’t just be striving for equal outcome. We have to really strive for equal opportunities and those opportunities have to be made available fairly in society, but you can’t just create new targets and create new problems by doing things like eliminating the test, putting a hit on Asian students. You have to go about this with real wisdom. Chitra Ragavan: As we wrap up Asra, have you had what I called “viral insights” in the wake of COVID-19, that moment of clarity that’s often brought upon by a crisis? Asra Nomani: Well, my son and I, when remote learning happened, move back home to Morgantown, West Virginia where my parents are in their ’80s now. And we live with them. My son helps my father bring dry wall down the stairs for the basement that my dad’s been finishing. Have a cup of tea with my mom in the morning. And I just value life. I mean, it’s the same way that when I sat in Karachi and saw how life can just be taken in an instant, in a way that you can’t even imagine, that’s what COVID did for me also. It just made me realize that this is a gift, every breath that we can take, literally, and I just every morning try to wake up with a reflection on my intentions for the day and really try to do good. Asra Nomani: Definitely go to bed at night, always thinking I could have done better, but wake up again, make my bed so that I can feel like I’ve accomplished one solid thing for the day when I returned back to the bed. But that’s really my epiphany is that, we have to really just keep doing that constant daily reflection so that we stay true to our inner values and our inner most important motions, really, which is friendship and family. Chitra Ragavan: Looking back at that young woman who was waiting in Karachi for her friend, Danny Pearl, to come home and only to find out that he had been kidnapped and murdered. What would you say to that woman about the journey that you’ve been on, and what would you say to Danny Pearl if he were here today? Asra Nomani: Oh Danny, poor thing. Maybe, I still have the survivor guilt because I would tell Danny, “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t save you.” I mean, I have dreams where I say that to him sometimes. But if Danny were here, oh my gosh, if he were here and he were alive, first of all, he would be the most fun, right? Now, during quarantine, he would always have entertainment in any household in which he was living. But this is the same message that Danny gave to me too in life. And this is the message that I would give to that younger woman that I was, which is, live unapologetically. Don’t live with shame, every voice that you have within yourself that questions you and second guesses you, just talk to that voice. Talk to that and get the bottom of it, but don’t let it define and dictate your options in this world. Asra Nomani: I have learned that courage can be lonely, but it’s also contagious and you will find your community. You will always find your community because for all that you are feeling, there are so many others. And that’s what I try now to communicate in my writings. Also, because I always think about my younger self, that had questions, that doubted myself, that thought I needed to live the life that I should live, not the one that I wanted to live. And I want to help others live self-actualized lives from a real place of authenticity and truth. And I would tell that younger woman, you’re doing well, love yourself and trust yourself. Chitra Ragavan: Asra, thank you so much for joining me on When it Mattered. Asra Nomani: Thank you so much, Chitra. Your honesty and clarity help others see themselves with a mirror that is the best of ourselves. So thank you. Thank you. Chitra Ragavan: Thank you very much. Asra Nomani is a journalist, author, activist and co-founder of The Pearl Project, a 31,000 word award-winning global investigative journalism report, identifying the network of militants who killed Wall Street journal correspondent, Danny Pearl. This week is the 19th anniversary of Pearl’s kidnapping and subsequent murder. Pakistani prosecutors are still struggling to keep his killers in jail and bring them to justice. This is When it Mattered. I’m Chitra Ragavan. Chitra Ragavan: When it Mattered is a podcast from Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups with brand strategy, positioning and narrative. Our producer is Jeremy Corr, founder and CEO of Executive Podcast Solutions, with production assistance from Kate Kruse. Our creative advisor is Adi Wineland and our research and logistics lead is Sarah Möller. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts or your preferred podcast platform. And if you liked the show, please rate it five stars, leave a review and do recommend it to your friends, family and colleagues. For questions, comments and transcripts, please visit our website @goodstory.io or send us an email at podcastat at goodstory.io. Join us next week for another episode of When it Mattered. I’ll see you then.   Ep.53 — A journalist upends her life and career to help identify and bring to justice the network of militants who murdered her friend and fellow correspondent at The Wall Street, Daniel Pearl / Asra Nomani, journalist, author, activist and co-founder, The Pearl Project. On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, Daniel Pearl, a correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, to return from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl’s killers and help bring them to justice.   In this riveting episode, Nomani describes how Pearl’s murder helped shape her as a journalist, author and a feminist Muslim. And she shares how the tragedy gave her the courage to become an activist challenging the rise of Islamic extremism and what she perceives as the dangerous influence of Islamists in American politics — particularly on the Democratic Party. Nomani also discusses why she is speaking up against the growing influence of “critical race theory,” both in the U.S. public school systems and on American society as a whole.   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, The Wall Street Journal correspondent, Daniel Pearl to come back from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Danny Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl’s killers and help bring them to justice. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory an advisory firm helping technology startups with strategic brand positioning and narrative. I’m joined now by Asra Nomani. She’s a journalist, author, activist and co-founder of The Pearl Project, a 31,000 word award-winning global investigative journalism report identifying the network of militants who perpetrated the heinous. Asra, welcome to the podcast. Asra Nomani: Oh, thank you so much, Chitra. I feel like I’m with such a good dear friend going into one of the darkest moments of my life, but I hope we can share some light with everyone. Chitra Ragavan: It’s been 19 years, almost exactly two days shy of that fateful day, January 23rd, 2002, when your world and that of Danny Pearl and his whole family turned upside down. Tell me when you found out that something had badly gone wrong. Asra Nomani: Well, that day began like any other day for journalists in, posting overseas. We all wakened, Danny and his wife Mariane were visiting a house that I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan. And Danny, went about the business of all his flurry of interviews he had planned for the day. I found a car for him and we stood outside this home that I’d rented and waved goodbye to Danny. And I said, “See you later, buddy,” because it was just an interview like any other that we go off to do and then come back home and write down our notes and write our dispatches. But that night, Mariane kept calling and calling Danny’s phone number and he never picked up. We just kept hearing this operator that said, “The call couldn’t go through.” Chitra Ragavan: And when did you realize something was wrong? Asra Nomani: So we had a dinner plan that night and we’d gone off to get all of the preparations. I had ordered beer because Danny enjoyed his beer. We’d called a bootlegger whose number I had gotten. And everybody had dinner, the folks that we had invited, but nobody was answering Danny’s phone. He was never answering. So at 10:00 finally, Mariane and I went and sat in front of Danny’s computer, went into his inbox, didn’t password protective it. And there I saw the email from the young man who had set up the interview. That’s when I just knew something was wrong because the email address was nobadmashi@yahoo.com. Chitra Ragavan: And why were you concerned by the email address, “nobadmashi?” Asra Nomani: So Chitra, you know your Bollywood movies? You know what a badmash is, right? Chitra Ragavan: A rascal? Asra Nomani: Yeah. A rascal. So why would anybody in their right mind write, norascal@yahoo.com as they’re setting up a legit interview with a sheikh cleric? And I just knew that something was wrong because nobody would write that. The badmaash is the bad guy in every Bollywood movie. And I just felt and knew in my heart that Danny had walked into trouble. Chitra Ragavan: Now, you yourself were in a foreign land. You’re also an American journalist. You are a writer working on a book project in Karachi. So when this crisis began to unfold, you yourself weren’t really in a great position to know what to do and to respond. I mean, what did you do next and how did you even know what to do? What was that like, that moment? Asra Nomani: Oh my gosh. It was so clarifying. I wish for no one a January 23rd, 2002 moment, but that was the moment when I was trying to find every bit of courage and capacity and capability within myself to try to save Danny. And so, what I knew how to do as a journalist was investigate. So immediately I got on the phone with other journalists to find out if they knew who this Sheikh [Mubarak Ali] Gilani was that Danny was about to meet. I found out then that another journalist locally had gone missing. I called relatives that I have in Pakistan. I called sources. Asra Nomani: And through the night we worked at, called the consulate, called The Wall Street journal office. Did everything that’s like old school reporting, called trusted people, called the neighbor, went over right next door to the neighbor when she awakened for the dawn prayer and begged people to help. And it was just a response like I never would have ever imagined. Everywhere I turned they said they couldn’t get involved. Chitra Ragavan: Were they afraid? Asra Nomani: They were all afraid. And that was the moment when I really realized what happens in a society to the citizenry when you don’t have a rule of law, when you can’t trust the police, when you have an intelligence agency that you’re afraid will come knocking on your door, they were all afraid to get involved. And finally, we got the police and two police officers came. A guy that we called Captain and then another police officer named “Dost”, which means friend, as you might know, in Urdu. And so, we got them, the house was overrun with police officers and intelligence agents. Asra Nomani: And the other thing that I had to do, Chitra, that I bet you can connect with is, I was born in India and I was born into a script, right, for many women and many girls in our culture. When I was literally eight-years-old growing up, I went back to India and a cousin of mine had written into my autograph book “silence is golden” because we were to be good girls. Right? We were supposed to tow the line, don’t challenge authority. And of course, I became a journalist and I learned how to raise questions. But in my own culture, I still thought that I had to tow the line. I got to wear my proper salwar kameez the long tunic and the baggy pants, wear my dupatta, the scarf over my head when I talked to the religious leaders. Asra Nomani: And at that moment, January 23rd, 2002, it was like all of the voices inside of my head that told me to be quiet or tow the line, just went out the window because I was laser-focused that I had to do everything that I possibly could to save Danny. And so, Mariane and I would joke, we had these boots that I had gotten to go hiking through Tora Bora to find Osama bin Laden. And every morning then I would lace up those boots, we called them our jihadi boots because we were on a jihad or a struggle for truth and for finding Danny. And there was no more compromise on my identity, no more second guessing myself, no voice within my head telling me to be quiet because I had to do everything strategically and intelligently to try to save Danny. Chitra Ragavan: So, all of your efforts though were unsuccessful, when did you find out his fate? Asra Nomani: Five weeks then into the search for Danny, all of a sudden I couldn’t get any of the police officers or the U.S. Consulate officials that had been a phone call away, they’d all disappeared. And I just didn’t know where they were so Mariane and I laced up our boots. We walked to my front door and that exact moment standing at the door, as I opened it were the Pakistani police officers and the U.S. Officials and the FBI agents. Asra Nomani: And Chitra, oh my gosh, these were grown men who would have seen the darkest of the dark. And they just stood there, just their faces is crestfallen, as if they had seen a ghost, as if they had seen the worst of the worst. And they had. That’s the moment when this police officer named Captain looked at Mariane and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t bring your Danny home.” Chitra Ragavan: And what had they, had they seen the video? What was it that made them look like ghosts? Asra Nomani: So that night, the FBI agents and Pakistani police officers had gotten a video and they had watched this video. That was the “slaughter” of the journalist Daniel Pearl. And in that video was documented Danny’s last words. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish. And then those horrible, horrible last seconds. So in that video then, they documented the Knife being put to Danny’s neck and his head being severed and held then by his killer as if it was some great prize in this jihad that the militants had launched upon with Danny as their victim. Chitra Ragavan: What was the reaction on your physical on mental health and emotional health and that of Mariane’s? And how did you recover from it in the coming weeks? And what actions did you take after you learned of the video? Asra Nomani: I really had never, ever understood trauma. I didn’t understand the reactions that our body and our minds have to trauma, but I immediately, I did learn that there is no atheist in a foxhole. And I sat outside Mariane’s bedroom saying my Muslim prayer for protection for her and her baby in her belly, because poor Mariane, rushed into her room and you just had a blood curdling scream, like I’ll never forget. Of course, as the world knows, as everybody knows, this was the worst, the worst, the worst of humanity. And I learned that our brains feel this tragedy and trauma and then something happens also to have us survive. Because even now 19 years later, I cannot even believe that this happened and that this is true. Asra Nomani: And I learned in those moments afterwards and the days afterwards and the months and years, honestly, afterwards, I learned that we hope by doing this thing that’s called dissociation, separating our own, our own minds and thoughts and brains from the horror of a trauma. And on one level it’s hoping and it’s healthy. And in another, you have to be careful because it can remove you from the emotion and tragedy of grief, which was some of my challenge. But oh man, Chitra, literally going into the abyss and figuring out how you will ever emerge again, that’s what those moments and days were like. Chitra Ragavan: And your life was further complicated. I mean, you’re a Muslim woman but a non-traditional one. You were married once in the US very briefly, divorced very quickly. And so, you were in Karachi, a single Muslim woman with a boyfriend when Danny was kidnapped and murdered. And then even as you were finding out the terrible news about him, you also, were about to get some very personal health information about yourself. Tell me about that. Asra Nomani: Yes. In the fourth week trying to find Danny, before we knew his fate, I realized that something was awry with my body. And I got in a car with police protection and went to the 24-hour pharmacy across the street from the Karachi Sheraton and got not just one pregnancy test but a few. Returned back to my home and there took one test after the next, with each one coming back positive for being pregnant. And it was shocking to me because this wasn’t my plan. This was not what I was expecting in this struggle to try to just find my friend. Asra Nomani: And there we were now, two pregnant women under one roof. I also I had this realization, I knew, I mean, the extremism problem in Pakistan is rooted in a very ultra-Orthodox fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that also says that a woman is illegal or criminal if she’s had sex outside of marriage. And in the case of pregnancy, your own baby can be used as evidence against you. And so, I just thought, “Oh my gosh, what am I to do?” So we kept it a secret. I found a doctor quietly, but I was afraid that even my blood tests would be used as evidence against me. And so, there was this secret, this fear. Asra Nomani: And then on top of it, then when I told my boyfriend, he just bailed on me because he was already afraid of Pakistani Intelligence, and now to get wrapped up in this soap opera, forget it. And so then, a week later we learned that Danny had been murdered. I just don’t know, you don’t know sort of the, you can have different levels of feeling, spiritual, religious or not. Just as if life came to me as a way, as a course for me to survive and to live in the midst of that darkness. So this was the double experience that I was having, to process and figure out answers for this brutal, brutal murder of dear Danny, and then this question within me of what to do with this life within me. Chitra Ragavan: So what did you do next? How did the Pearl Project come about? Asra Nomani: Well, I chose life because I had amazing, and I have amazing, amazing parents. They are conservative, but they are humanists. And when my mother learned that I was pregnant, she said, “You must have this baby.” And my father, oh my gosh, my father sent me an email, literally, just that said, I love you. Because you know, dads, and I know your dad loved technology, too. And yeah, my dad used an email to communicate that unconditional love that’s so important. So I chose life. I chose to come back to America to raise my son as a single mom with my parents support. I had him in my hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia, where I’m talking to you from today. And I tell you, I had my first birthday party for Shibli, that’s my son’s name. Asra Nomani: And then, like, the second one. And I chose to live, I chose to live and raise him with love and truth and honesty. But there is this question, all these questions still lingering about poor Danny’s murder. There was a network of people who were involved in propping him, and there were so many questions about how they worked, how they operated and I had to get the answers. And so The Pearl Project began as a investigation at Georgetown University with students, to find the truth left behind on the streets of Karachi. Chitra Ragavan: And what was your goal? Asra Nomani: Well, the actual goal was to discover every detail in the plot to kidnap Danny, and in the captivity, the investigation, the court case, every little detail. That was the external objective, right? But clearly there was this unfinished business within me, this grief still not processed. And I came to really understand my brain a little bit more too, because not immediately, but later I knew that I had to know every little fact in order to be able to process then the grief. And that was just my path. Asra Nomani: And ultimately the external reason that just stayed with me through every moment of, and twist and turn was, just wanted to do right by Danny in terms of the truth and justice for him, so that there would be no stone unturned. And that we could send a clear message as journalists that we stand with our fellow journalists from the newsroom, that we will not allow anybody to get away with murder. And I just really felt, no, we couldn’t save Danny, but we needed to fight for the truth and for justice. Chitra Ragavan: Well, as we mentioned, this is the 19th anniversary almost to the day that we’re recording. This is January 21st, and he disappeared on January 23rd. And interestingly, there have been a lot of recent developments that are also coming to a head this coming week. Talk a little bit about that with respect to the lead culprit and the court hearings and what’s likely to unfold. Asra Nomani: Well, what we discovered was that nobadmashi@yahoo.com was an account run by this British-Pakistani young man named Omar Sheikh. And the Pakistani police successfully prosecuted him in 2002 along with three co-conspirators. That was very satisfying because this is a man who is an extremist and a danger to society, along with his co-conspirators. But as COVID was sweeping the world in April, 2020, we got this shocking news from Pakistan that judges in the Sindh High Court in Karachi, had decided that Omar Sheikh and his three co-conspirators were going to be freed from jail. Asra Nomani: But they ruled that the three co-conspirators were innocent and that Omar Sheikh was only guilty of abduction, not even kidnapping for ransom. And they ruled that it wasn’t even terrorism. So it was such a shock. It was just unbelievable, but it was just like that moment, January 23rd, 2002, when, you have to just kick into action. We learned that we have 30 days to file an appeal, that in the Pakistani courts, the victim’s family can file an appeal. And so, I talked to Danny’s dad immediately, and his sister Tamara, and they decided they were going to appeal. Asra Nomani: And we got to the business then of powers of attorney, finding a lawyer in Pakistan, filing the papers, just doing all of the work in the midst of COVID. And we did it, Chitra, we filed the appeal and that appeal has been going through the Pakistan Supreme Court for almost all these months now, right? And any day now, we’re expecting a decision. We hope, we pray that Omar Sheikh and the three co-conspirators will remain in jail. We feel confident, we hope, hope, hope that that will happen. Chitra Ragavan: And the U.S. Justice Department has raised the possibility that if Omar Sheikh is allowed to be set free, that he could potentially be brought to the U.S. and tried here, which could potentially be good news even if it falls through on the other end. Right? Asra Nomani: Yeah. They have this warning they’ve sort of issued to the government of Pakistan. A message, let’s say. That if you can’t keep Omar Sheikh in jail, we can take over the case. Because Omar Sheikh was indicted in U.S. Courts in 2002. So he could be extradited and tried in court in America. We feel like the government of Pakistan and the Supreme Court will do the right thing. They have definitely listened carefully to the arguments of the family’s lawyer, Faisal Siddiqui and the government case also. And so, we’re really hopeful that they will be able to do right for Danny, but the U.S. Government has fortunately supported the family. Chitra Ragavan: Now, in the years since Danny died, you’ve become an activist, too in addition to being a writer and a journalist. You’ve taken on the Islamic communities in the U.S. On a number of fronts notably on Islamic terrorism, extremism, the rights of Muslim women. You’ve talked openly about Muslim women and sex and other topics that were taboo. ome of your books Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. Chitra Ragavan: And Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love. You’ve written some controversial articles, including Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom and Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque. How did the events in 2002 shape you as an activist and getting in touch with your voice, and what has been some of the response to your positions and your writings? Asra Nomani: Well, I just love the concept of your podcast and the kind of reflections that you have us even think about, even that I thought about. Wondering about the issues of leadership in my life, but Chitra, there we were in the trenches, right? In this horrible, horrible moment. And I couldn’t agree to the voices in my ancestry or my upbringing that had told me to be quiet or sit in the back and stay compliant and be a good girl. And there was so much clarifying during those five weeks for me, first, I had to decide whether I was going to carry this life into the world. Was I going to defy the shame, the taboos, the laws even that criminalized bringing a baby into the world without a wedding ring? Then I realized in those weeks, extremism, what is the claim that they have on our communities? Asra Nomani: The men who dropped off the photos of Danny in captivity, had done that in a mosque in Karachi that women weren’t even allowed to enter. Well, how could that be? I knew about the extremism problem within my Muslim communities since I was a girl. Because I was born in 1965, I grew up with it through the ’70s and ’80s as Saudi Arabia and Iran were fueling it to out extreme the other country. But I never reported about it, Chitra. As a journalist, I never wrote one word about it. Danny wrote more about the extremism problem within Islam than I did. And when this happened, and I also realized the life within me was literally sacrificed in this debate. I thought, I have a obligation to speak up. And that was when I first decided to move from the news pages to the opinion pages and write columns. Asra Nomani: And my first column was about The Right of a Muslim Woman to Bring a Baby into this World, Even if she Wasn’t Married because a woman in Nigeria was about to be executed because she had had a baby outside of wedlock. And so that’s where I found, I think this concept of thought leadership, thought leadership was an idea that I never even contemplated. And then when I went to my mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia with my little baby, this elder stood in front of me and said I had to take the back door and go into this back balcony. And I wasn’t even allowed into the front room. And I thought, “Are you kidding me?” So the extremist can lay claim to our mosques and our pulpits, but I as a woman have to take the back door by the garbage can. Asra Nomani: And so, that was when I become an accidental activist. And I didn’t know how to be the kind of “leader” that galvanizes people and convinces the other women to go into the main hall with me. But I went on my own and I had my mom with me. So that was my greates