Dear friends of My Country Talks,

Hello everyone and welcome to our first newsletter in 2024. We are very excited to announce our soon-to-be-released documentary on The World Talks – our first global dialogue program that brought together more than 5,000 people from 112 countries last year. The documentary will feature four participants from different continents and portray them in their everyday lives. Read on to get a sneak preview into what they think about the world, and who they met for a personal conversation...

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Raidah from Bangladesh

Raidah is 25 years old and lives in Dhaka, one of the most vibrant and densely populated cities in the world. She is an extremely ambitious person, focused on her career in marketing, and doesn’t want to think about getting married soon. Instead, she devotes all her energy to her professional life and her friends, who she cares for a lot. She lives with her parents and siblings, as most people in Bangladesh do before they get married. She was among the first women in her family to wear a hijab, and decided to do so only a few years ago. Interestingly, her mother decided to follow suit.  

Raidah was matched for a conversation with Huck from Finland. When they spoke for the first time, she was astonished by how much a single person can sacrifice to protect this planet. 

Huck from Finland

Huck lives in a yurt, in the middle of a forest about four hours away from Helsinki, and produces his own energy with the help of a bicycle. He has a strong conviction that saving the climate is every person’s individual responsibility. While Raidah is eager to explore the world, Huck refuses to travel in a plane or even a car. When Raidah and Huck met for the first time, they started a discussion about whether governments or individuals have more responsibility in protecting the planet.

Junaice from Tanzania 

Junaice is a young woman from Arusha that experienced many hardships in her very early life. When she was a child, she often had to go to bed hungry. Although her mom did everything in her power to feed her children, it often simply wasn’t possible to get enough. Junaice now has a successful career in tourism, but still doesn’t think that hard work always leads to a better life. In fact, she still struggles to make her life and that of her family better everyday. 

John from Amsterdam 

John is a musician from the Netherlands and holds close ties to his friends, who he considers to be his family. He is very worried about the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and thinks that every country in the world should accept refugees. In his life, he has hosted various people in need, among them a family from Pakistan. When he met Junaice for the first time, they started talking about different concepts of family, and why they have very divergent views on the question of whether older generations are living at the expense of younger people.

If you want to know more

Producing a documentary about our work and all the wonderful people around the world that have signed up to our dialogue formats is fascinating and totally new to us. We’re still in the midst of producing the film and would love to invite you to one of our screenings. Follow us on Instagram and stay tuned for more information! 

What we are reading 

Jan Voelkel is a PhD at Stanford University. Last year, he was part of our Depolarization Unconference in Berlin, where we invited a number of reknown international scientists and practioners from the field of polarization.  

In a recent interview, conducted by two colleagues from ZEIT ONLINE, he explains how societies become polarized and what we can do about it. And there is hope! Citing research from the United States, he argues that there is a way to convince people with arguments that allude to their own moral values.