If You Were In Charge

Naila Kabeer: The Economics of Care - Moving Beyond GDP

Feminist economist Naila Kabeer joins Sanam and Kavita to ask why we still measure success in GDP and what we could build if we counted care, peace and the planet. A clear-eyed, hopeful conversation about Beyond GDP, the absurd cost of the war in Iran for future generations, and the everyday agency that changes the world. Welcome to If You Were In Charge the radical leadership podcast about people, power and possibilities with Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Kavita Nandini Ramdas. On this episode before we get to the interview, Sanam and Kavita pick up the threads Naila weaves through the conversation. They look at the $20 trillion annual cost of war, the way the care economy quietly runs on immigrant women, and the Iranian paradox where 65% of university professors are women inside a theocracy. A vivid reminder of why we need new ways to measure what's actually working in our societies. We then welcome in Naila who explains how GDP was invented in wartime to count what could be sold, and what it has always quietly excluded: the unpaid work that holds families together, the rivers and forests that hold up the planet, and a system now monopolised by a handful of oligarchs. She unpacks the staggering price tag of war nearly $20 trillion a year, around 11.6% of global GDP and asks what we could build instead if we counted care, peace, human capabilities, and the rights of the living world. We also hear about her new book “Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox” — a study of how ordinary women, in some of the most oppressive circumstances, have changed their societies not through revolution but through everyday persistence. “Despair is a luxury for the well-off. I do not think we can afford to despair.” If You Were In Charge is a podcast about people, power and possibilities, brought to you by ICAN subscribe to our newsletter [https://icanpeacework.org/2025/03/sign-up-to-icans-newsletter/]! An ADA Podcasts [https://www.adapodcasts.com/] Naila Kabeer Links. LSE faculty page: https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-development/people/naila-kabeer [https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-development/people/naila-kabeer] Naila's personal site (books, articles, talks): https://nailakabeer.net/ [https://nailakabeer.net/] Renegotiating Patriarchy — free open-access download (LSE Press, 2024): https://press.lse.ac.uk/books/m/10.31389/lsepress.rpg [https://press.lse.ac.uk/books/m/10.31389/lsepress.rpg] UN High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP — members: https://www.un.org/en/beyondGDP/members [https://www.un.org/en/beyondGDP/members] IAFFE Feminist Economics Podcast (Kavita mentions this at the end): https://www.iaffe.org/feminist-economics-podcast [https://www.iaffe.org/feminist-economics-podcast] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Raffaella Bolini: Europe's New Arms Race - The Only Winning Move Is Not to Play

Italian peace activist Raffaella Bolini was on the streets of the 80s peace movement against the Euromissiles. Forty years later, she's back, pushing back on a Europe planning to spend €6.8 trillion on armaments over the next decade. In conversation with Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Kavita Nandini Ramdas, she makes the case for common security, the politics of care, and a multipolar Europe of intersectional regions. The only winning move, she argues, is not to play. Sanam and Kavita open the episode with the latest flotilla to be intercepted on the way to Gaza, the unfolding war in Iran, and the absurdity of trillions being spent on defence at the expense of future generations, while everything from healthcare to social services goes without. But not without hope. They also remember the remarkable legacy of Cora and Peter Weiss, whose memorial was held this month, two activists at the forefront of the peace and justice movement for their entire lifetimes. If You Were In Charge is a podcast about people, power and possibilities, brought to you by ICAN subscribe to the ICAN Newsletter! [https://icanpeacework.org/2025/03/sign-up-to-icans-newsletter/] An ADA Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Guest Episode: Disrupting Peace

What beliefs make people willing to commit violence, and what could change their minds? In this episode, we explore what makes individuals vulnerable to white supremacist beliefs, what it means when extremism becomes mainstream, the surprising permeability of these groups, and how to talk to people in your life who express racist ideology. Peter Simi is a professor of Sociology at Chapman University, and an expert on extremist groups and violence in the US. Among his many publications, he is co-author of American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate, and Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can be Stopped. Find out more about Peter at: https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/pete-simi.aspx. Sara Winegar Budge holds a doctorate in Psychology and is a licensed psychologist in Oregon. She is the Director of US Programs at Moonshot, which builds technology to identify and disrupt organized crime, child sexual exploitation, and trafficking, among other forms of abuse and violence. Her clinical work focuses on individuals who are or have been involved in violent extremism. Find out more at https://moonshotteam.com/ [https://moonshotteam.com/] In this episode, we talk about Stephen Tyrone Johns, Bridget's former colleague from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum who was killed by a white supremacist. You can learn more about him, and contribute to a fund in his name, here: https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/in-memoriam/stephen-tyrone-johns-1969-2009. Disrupting Peace is a production of The World Peace Foundation. The show is produced by Bridget Conley and Emily Shaw. Engineering by Jacob Winik and Aja Simpson. Marketing and Social media by Kaelen Song. Show artwork by Simon Fung. This season was partially funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Special thanks to Lisa Avery and Alex de Waal, and the Tufts Digital Design Studio team. Find out more about the World Peace Foundation at worldpeacefoundation.org. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at @worldpeacefdtn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Anasuya Sengupta: AI, Colonising Knowledge, and Iran's Information War

The internet is a monocrop. A plantation of knowledge in English, owned by a handful of mega corporations, built on the bones of colonial infrastructure. And we are no longer just the consumers and as ever we are the product, the training set, the data points. So who gets to imagine the future? This week on If You Were In Charge, Sanam and Kavita sit down with Anasuya Sengupta, co-founder of Whose Knowledge?, a global multilingual campaign to centre the knowledges of marginalised communities (the minoritised majority of the world) online. Anasuya traces a direct line from the telegraph networks of the British Empire to today’s Big Tech monopolies. But this is not just a story of extraction. Anasuya shares what it looks like when voices from the margins reimagine technology. From building sovereign language models in Bangla, Urdu and Hindi, to transforming Wikipedia so that women are no longer invisible. The episode opens with Sanam and Kavita reflecting on the Iran ceasefire, the extraordinary Lego memes coming out of Iran, and what it means when the world is surprised that Iranians have both sophisticated technology and a sense of humour. Anasuya Sengupta — Co-founder of Whose Knowledge? [https://whoseknowledge.org/] If You Were In Charge is brought to you by ICAN International Civil Society Action Network. Subscribe and get in touch with us via our Newsletter [https://icanpeacework.org/2025/03/sign-up-to-icans-newsletter/] Original Music, Little Monster Media Executive Producer: Pearse Lynch This is an ADA Production [https://www.adapodcasts.com/] Timeline * 00:00 — Cold open: Anasuya on “plantation tech” * 00:26 — Intro with Sanam and Kavita * 00:36 — Hosts discuss the Iran ceasefire, Lego memes, and Iranian political humour * 07:15 — Transition to the possibilities theme and Arundhati Roy quote * 07:35 — Reflection on the ceasefire moment and what comes next * 10:30 — Discussion of Anthropic, AI containment, and Palantir * 12:13 — Main interview begins: Anasuya Sengupta on the internet and search * 14:30 — Tech solutionism and the polycrisis * 16:34 — Colonial history of the internet: telegraph to Big Tech * 20:30 — Infrastructure: who owns the message vs the messenger * 23:12 — “We are the training set” — AI and data extraction * 24:21 — Founding of Whose Knowledge? and feminist tech activism * 28:16 — Women’s invisibility in knowledge systems and Wikipedia * 33:12 — “If you were in charge” — reimagining tech from the margins * 35:37 — Language, plantation tech, and multilingual futures * 38:26 — Disability rights and imagining from the margins in * 40:09 — Scaling across, not scaling up * 43:30 — The right to refusal and feminist archives * 47:24 — Representation: necessary but insufficient * 49:38 — A growing coalition for change * 50:15 — Radical idea: knowledge as a commons * 52:59 — Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Farhana Yamin, Reetta Toivanen & Rana Dajani: Iran, Gaza Reax - Why Never Again Is Now

Hospitals in Iran are preparing to evacuate children. International institutions are issuing statements while bombs fall on petrochemical plants. And five women sit down in Berlin to ask: what radical ideas should actually be common sense? This episode of If You Were In Charge opens with hosts Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Kavita Ramdas in conversation about the Iran crisis. Trump’s threats of escalation, the spectre of nuclear disaster, and the devastating parallel with Gaza. They ask the question that frames the whole episode: have the institutions built by generations of careful, caring work, the UN, the IAEA, international law has finally failed us? Then the episode moves to Berlin, where Sanam and Kavita are joined by three extraordinary guests for a live group conversation recorded at the Robert Bosch Foundation Forum: Farhana Yamin — World-renowned climate lawyer. Attended COP 1 in Berlin in 1995. Now working on global governance and philanthropy for frontline communities. Reetta Toivanen — Finnish legal anthropologist and Professor at the University of Helsinki. Researches refugee knowledge and just transition in Europe. Rana Dajani — Palestinian-Syrian professor of molecular cell biology. Researches the epigenetics of trauma. Founded We Love Reading, now in 78 countries. Together, they tackle: abolishing national borders, valuing care work, why trauma survivors inherit agency (not victimhood), diaspora economies that outperform foreign aid, AI that can’t tell a scientist from a nun, and what it really means to put feminists—of every gender—in charge. If You Were In Charge is brought to you by ICAN⁠ ⁠⁠⁠International Civil Society Action Network⁠⁠⁠ [https://icanpeacework.org/2025/03/sign-up-to-icans-newsletter/]⁠ Original Music, Little Monster Media  Executive Producer: Pearse Lynch This is an ⁠⁠⁠⁠ADA Production⁠ [https://www.adapodcasts.com/] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]