How We Got Here (PRI) and Alison Des Forges

Saturday, February 21, 2009 5:23 p.m.

Four episodes in, I'm really enjoying How We Got Here, a podcast from PRI's The World. I've never heard The World – what stands out the most about it to me is how a studio manager in Bush House got excited telling how good the ISDN line to WGBH in Boston used to sound, and with so little delay. 

So all I know of the content of The World comes from this podcast, which I noticed when its producer Jeb Sharp mentioned it in her Twitter. And I follow her on Twitter because there, she follows my place of work, International Crisis Group. In this episode of the podcasts, those two worlds have slid into sync. 

How We Got Here, episode 4, is about the Cambodian genocide trials, and moves on to talk about Alison Des Forges, who did astonishing work for Human Rights Watch in Rwanda. I admit I had never heard of her before last week, but she was clearly well known and admired by my colleagues. 

In this podcast, an anthropologist called Susan Cook spoke of how Alison Des Forges, and of how media isn't enough to stop genocide, yet genocide must be documented. This matters to me, and it's why I've ended up, albeit briefly, in Crisis Group's Communications Unit.

The topics for the How We Got Here podcast have all hit the spot for me, and I have been promoting them around the office. If you are interested in these fields, or, to put it simply, if the title appeals to you, then subscribe to How We Got Here.

Finally, a note that I am not staff at Crisis Group, and what I write here is my own opinion, not Crisis Group's.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Just wanted to say thanks for talking up How We Got Here. I'm really enjoying doing it, precisely to explore the historical context I so often don't have time for in my regular radio stories. Please join the How We Got Here Facebook Group if you're so inclined--I'd love to build a community and conversation there. And feel free to send ideas for future episodes! Cheers, Jeb Sharp

Connor Walsh said...

A pleasure Jeb– you're really filling a gap, and doing the very difficult task of finding light-bulb topics that seems like they should be obvious – but aren't!

Could you post a link here to the Facebook group? I've had a couple of look but can't find it!

Unknown said...

Here it is:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73351279128

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