Inside Gay Pakistan

Graphene is a super-strong and super-conductive material. Gerry Northam looks at its move from the laboratory to the commercial world. 

The US Federal Reserve, America's central bank, is one hundred years old. Simon Jack tells its surprising story. 

Brazil's anti-slavery hit-squads are unique. Linda Pressly joins a raid with a committed band of labour inspectors on an alleged slave labour operation in deepest rural Brazil. 

In this episode we dive into the history of homosexuality, same-sex desire, and gay love in Islamic societies. We examine the realm of religion, scripture, literature, and medicine and what they tell us about same-sex desire. We recount the lives of famous gay and lesbian figures ... Show More

The most frequent narrative of queer people in the Middle East is one of being persecuted by government and religion. Being ostracised by society and rejected by families. There is truth to these stories, but there are also other stories to be told. Elias Jahshan was determined t ... Show More

The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan: Sociality, Space and Time (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) by Dr. James Cummings explores the everyday lives of gay men in Hainan, an island province of the People’s Republic of China. Taking an ethnographic and phenomenological approach, it ask ... Show More

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the Karachi-based journalist Sanam Maher to discuss cliché and originality in foreign correspondents' writing on Pakistan; a whistle-stop tour through (some) of the books of 2021; Lucy Scholes reviews a clutch of novels in ... Show More

Pakistani Pride in Dubai: Mom In Dubai on Culture, Food & Family 

Mohsin Zaidi's memoir, A Dutiful Boy, is one of the most powerful and emotive books I've read this year. It tells the story of his upbringing in a poor pocket of east London, in a devout Shia Muslim community. His family were close-knit and religiously conservative. From a young ... Show More