Sonia Faleiro on Political Oppression in India

In this episode, award-winning journalist Sonia Faleiro talks about dangerous developments in Indian democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The repression of the Muslim minority and restrictions on the democratic public sphere have taken on dramatic proportions, she says. Faleiro believes that only a democracy movement on the scale of India's freedom struggle can bring real change. Sonia Faleiro grew up in India and lives in London. Her most recent book The Good Girls (Penguin, 2021), has been called "a riveting, sometimes astonishing work of forensic journalism" by the Wall Street Journal.



 

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Tom Zoellner (host) is the New York Times bestselling author of eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, Uranium Train, and The Heartless Stone. He teaches at Chapman University and Dartmouth College. A former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, he is the politics editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

 

Aida Baghernejad (co-host) is an award-winning journalist and culture critic based in Berlin. Her work appears in national and international media outlets, among them the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Tagesspiegel, Zeit Online and Deutschlandfunk Kultur, as well as the German podcast series Pasta & Politik, featuring leading female politicians and thinkers in Germany. In 2021, she received the International Music Journalism Award as Music Journalist of the Year. She has previously taught at King’s College London and the Humboldt University Berlin.

 

Lisa Bartfai (producer) is an award-winning independent radio journalist, podcast producer, and translator. She is the producer and editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books podcast 55 Voices for Democracy, and the producer, editor, and host of Bowdoin Presents, a podcast by Bowdoin College. Bartfai’s own reporting was included in the Columbia Review of Journalism’s “Best journalism of 2020: Covering racial justice,” and has been awarded second place in the Society for Features Journalism 2021 Excellence-in-Features, in the Best Podcast category. Bartfai is a mentor with Report for America, and a proud alumni of the KALW Audio Academy.

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