The Big Picture with Mohamed Hassan

Why I turned my camera from Hollywood to Palestine | Misan Harriman

This week on The Big Picture Podcast we’re joined by celebrated photographer and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Misan Harriman. Harriman has built a global following through his moving black and white photography of the world’s most recognisable faces, becoming the first ever Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue. Since then, he made his directorial debut with the emotional short film ruminating on grief, The After, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2024. His new documentary, Shoot The People, chronicles his own story as he travels the world drawing inspiration from the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, Black Lives Matter in the US and the Gaza ceasefire movement here in the UK. But what makes Harriman stand out is what he chooses to turn his lens, and his platform, towards.  Since October 7, he’s been a staple of pro-Palestine rallies, searching through the crowds for individual protesters with a message that resonates with him, and showing that to the world.  Before that he covered the Black Lives Matter movement, framing ordinary people in extraordinary ways, giving them the same intimate and dramatic treatment he gives to the world’s rich and famous. And through his lens, he sends a message. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and any guests you'd like us to have on our show. Reach us by email at mh@middleeasteye.org or find us on instagram @BigPictureMee. You can also watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyaP73Ho1ySj3cO0OSOHZAOgD1WTDixG

Francesca Albanese exposed a global "economy of genocide", then she was sanctioned

Just two days after we sat down with Francesca Albanese, the Trump Administration placed her under sanctions. They accuse the UN Special Rapporteur of waging “economic warfare” on the United States. She says the sanctions are “mafia style intimidation techniques” and vows to continue her work to remind states of their obligations to “stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.” So why has the US taken such a drastic move? That has a lot to do with a scathing report Albanese just published, titled the “economy of genocide”. In it, she accuses more than 60 corporations of “sustaining and profiting off of Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.” Some of these companies include Google, Amazon, Hyundai Booking.com and the bank Barclays. This week on the Big Picture Podcast, we sit down with Francesca Albanese to talk about what her explosive report exposes about the world's richest companies, and how the rest of us are implicated in a system that exploits the pain of Palestinians for the sake of profit. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and any guests you'd like us to have on our show. Reach us by email at mh@middleeasteye.org or find us on instagram @BigPictureMee. You can also watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyaP73Ho1ySj3cO0OSOHZAOgD1WTDixG

Silicon Valley, Israel and the new AI arms race | Antony Loewenstein

What does the war look like in the age of AI? This week on the Big Picture Podcast, we’re joined by author and investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein. We spoke to Loewenstein early in 2024 about his best-selling book ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ - which chronicled how Israel tests high tech weapons in Gaza before exporting them to the world. Since then, The Palestine Laboratory has been turned into a documentary with Al Jazeera, where Loewenstein travels to Mexico, Greece, India and South Africa to investigate how this technology is changing law enforcement and government surveillance around the world. Part of his work has examined how Silicon Valley and the AI sector have fueled the rise of a new arms race, one where technology giants like Microsoft and Amazon now compete for lucrative defence contracts worth tens of billions of dollars. These are the same companies that once promised only to use their powers for good. Google famously enshrined the words ‘Don’t Be Evil’ into their manifesto. But what was happening behind the scenes was a different story.  We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and any guests you'd like us to have on our show. Reach us by email at mh@middleeasteye.org or find us on instagram @BigPictureMee. You can also watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyaP73Ho1ySj3cO0OSOHZAOgD1WTDixG

Norman Finkelstein on Israel, Zohran Mamdani and the coming class war

In a fiery and deeply personal return to The Big Picture Podcast, professor Norman Finkelstein explains why Israel and its allies in the West have destroyed the international order, and how the election of a Muslim socialist in New York threatens their grip on power. Finkelstein is a political scientist and one of the world’s foremost scholars on Israel-Palestine, as well as a critic of culture and empire.  He is the author of The Holocaust Industry and most recently, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and any guests you'd like us to have on our show. Reach us by email at mh@middleeasteye.org or find us on instagram @BigPictureMee. You can also watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyaP73Ho1ySj3cO0OSOHZAOgD1WTDixG

The Israel-Iran war is more dangerous than we imagine | David Hearst

This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we sit down with Middle East Eye’s Editor in Chief David Hearst to talk about the rapidly unfolding war between Israel and Iran, why the West supports it and what it threatens to unleash on the global order. So what does Israel really want to achieve, what options does Iran have to deescalate, and will the United States stop the war, or join it? We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and any guests you'd like us to have on our show. Reach us by email at mh@middleeasteye.org or find us on instagram @BigPictureMee. You can also watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyaP73Ho1ySj3cO0OSOHZAOgD1WTDixG