Gulf Pods Joab Kankiriho

In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges Naomi Wolf, one of the world's best-known feminists and author of the seminal book The Beauty Myth, on where the feminist movement is headed, and whether her controversial latest writings are furthering or undermining the cause of women's rights.  Wolf vigorously defends her latest book Vagina: A New Biography, in which she argues, "to understand the vagina properly is to realize that it is not only coextensive with the female brain, but is also, essentially, part of the female soul." The book has been labelled as 'essentialist', 'narcissistic' and 'simplistic' by fellow feminists.  We explore whether feminism is dominated by white, middle-class Western women and how it can represent the interests of women across cultural lines.  We also ask why the media has branded Naomi Wolf a 'conspiracy theorist' in recent years, and whether there is truth to her claim that the US has become a police state.  Joining the discussion are:  Andrea Stuart, an award-winning feminist author and lecturer in cultural studies. Caroline Criado-Perez, a feminist campaigner, journalist and author of Do It Like a Woman. Finn Mackay, the founder of the London Feminist Network and author of Radical Feminism. Hana Riaz, founder and director of The Body Narratives, an NGO dedicated to documenting the narratives of women of colour. 

In this episode of Head to Head , Mehdi Hasan challenges Hina Rabbani Khar, former foreign minister of Pakistan, on whether the army is in control of the country, and if Pakistan has been supporting the Taliban.  Joining the discussion are:  Omar Waraich, an award-winning British journalist and former Pakistan correspondent for Time Magazine;   Humeira Iqtidar, Pakistani Senior Lecturer in Politics of South Asia at King's College London and author of Secularising Islamists?   Mosharraf Zaidi, former advisor to Foreign Minister Rabbani Khar as well as the EU and UN.

With the headlines covering fanaticism, fundamentalism, superstition and ignorance, religion is getting a bad press these days. And much of the conflict in the world, from the Middle East to Nigeria and Myanmar, is often blamed on religion.  But how are things from a different perspective? Some defenders of religion claim Adolf Hitler was an atheist. Communism under Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Zedong banned religion, but also massacred millions. And science brought incredible and amazing advances, but also pollution and the atomic bomb.  A critic of religious dogmatism, Professor Richard Dawkins revolutionised genetics in 1976 with the publication of The Selfish Gene. He has since written 12 more bestsellers, including The God Delusion which sold millions of copies, was translated into more than 30 languages, and catapulted him to the position of the world's foremost atheist.  Mehdi Hasan challenges evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at the Oxford Union in front of a varied and lively audience.  In a frank and at times heated exchange, they discuss: Is religion a force for good or evil? Can it co-exist with science? Is science the new religion? And why if god does not exist, is religion so persistent?

"They deluded themselves in believing that they were allies. Actually, they were not," says former Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. General Asad Durrani, commenting on Pakistan's rocky relationship with the United States since they allied in the "War on Terror".  In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges General Durrani on whether Pakistan is fighting or fuelling international terrorism.  We explore the nation's role as a US ally in the "War on Terror", and investigate claims that it has been backing the Afghan Taliban, whilst its offshoot, the Pakistani Taliban, wages a brutal insurgency at home.  Is Pakistan a rogue state? Or is it stuck between a rock and a hard place? And what role should the military play in a democratic Pakistan?  Joining this discussion are:  • Dr Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow at Chatham House and author of Making Sense of Pakistan • Declan Walsh, Pakistan Bureau chief for the New York Times • Shazadi Beg, a human rights barrister and Pakistan specialist  What do you think? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

In this episode, Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with two guests with opposing views.  In part one, he challenges Lanhee Chen, chief architect of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign. Chen argues that "the employer-sponsored system ... has been the linchpin of a quality system of care we have in the US".  And in part two, Hasan debates Bernie Sanders surrogate and health policy expert Abdul El-Sayed. "I don't want to live in a society where any of my neighbours … have to potentially go bankrupt because they got sick ... and that's what we have here in the United States," he says.  *Editors Note: In the programme, Hasan refers to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, published May 13, which estimated that by May 2, 2020, some 27 million Americans could have lost their health insurance as a result of the economic impact of the coronavirus. After this segment was recorded, a new study, conducted by Families USA, estimated that 5.4 million Americans lost their health insurance. While the Kaiser study took into account family members of the insured, the Families USA study did not. Americans frequently receive their insurance through another family member's employer.

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge," says Jimmy Wales about his brainchild Wikipedia, the non-for-profit crowd-sourced online encyclopedia.   But as internet freedoms are besieged by mass surveillance, can his project survive?  In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan questions Jimmy Wales, one of the world’s most renowned internet gurus, on his future plans, on whether Wikipedia is advancing or degrading our knowledge, and on whether liberty, privacy and security can coexist in an online era.  So, is the internet dumbing us down? Is Wikipedia the best thing since sliced bread? Can online freedom survive state surveillance?  Joining the discussion are Bob Ayres, a former NSA and CIA intelligence officer; Isabella Sankey, the director of policy at British human rights organisation, Liberty; Herman Chinery-Hesse, a Ghanaian internet entrepreneur and founder of one of Africa’s largest software companies; and Oliver Kamm, a British writer and journalist.