Our August 24 program focuses on a conversation with Kirthi Jayakumar. Kirthi lives in Chennai, India, and holds a degree in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution from the University for Peace in Costa Rica. She has also earned a masters degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the Centre for Trust, Peace, and Security.

A lot of Kirthi’s work is focused on helping survivors of gender-based violence, including authoring Frankly Speaking, a play that channels the voices of eight young women from conflict zones in different parts of the world, interspersed with passages from The Diary of Anne Frank.

Kirthi and I discuss the impact that climate change has had on India this year.

We also discuss how the ascendant Cockroach Party is impacting the entrenched government of Narendra Modi, and how the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence plays into the conflict.

Finally, we discuss how opposition to AI data centers is becoming a mass movement not just in the US but across India and much of the rest of the world. Continue Reading →