Explore the deep ocean and understand the 'manosphere': Catch up on these Forum podcasts
Marine biologist and explorer Diva Amon live from a deep ocean submersible examining the health of Mesophotic coral reefs off the coast of the Seychelles. Image: Photo by Ritupon Baishya on Unsplash
- The Forum has three weekly podcasts - here's your monthly roundup.
- Meet the Leader featured an extreme rower whose experience in the Amazon shaped her career as an eco-entrepreneur.
- Jude Kelly, theatre director and feminist campaigner, spoke to Radio Davos.
- Agenda Dialogues took us to the bottom of the ocean.
- Find them all at wef.ch/podcasts.
How does canoeing up the Amazon and across the ocean help you lead and chart your unique path?
What should men be saying to each other about 'toxic masculinity'?
And what are scientists doing hundreds of metres below the sea?
All three questions – and so much more – were answered on the World Economic Forum’s podcasts over the last month. Here are some highlights from our three weekly shows, with links so you can subscribe wherever you like to listen.
Meet the Leader - lessons in leadership
"I don't think you can spend three months in the middle of the Amazon living with indigenous communities without that sort of fundamentally changing your life."
Kat Bruce founded a company that measures the tiny traces of DNA in the air, water and soil that show what organisms have been there. But she is also a competitive rower and has conducted expeditions in the Amazon, riding on balsa rafts she made herself. So she has a unique insight into leadership, tackling high-pressure situations and working with near strangers make big things possible.
"We ended up in big storms in the Irish Sea ... And you have to work together. You have to go through those difficult times where you have to hear other people's views, and then you have to actually make a decision and do it and do it together and commit to it," she tells Meet the Leader
"So that was amazing to do in a completely different context from my work life."
Radio Davos – the podcast that looks at the world’s biggest challenges and what we can do to solve them
"There's no doubt about it that the ‘manosphere’, as it's termed, is a growing and worrying situation. I think they are outriders, but there's too many of them to just let it go and not be worried."
Jude Kelly is a British theatre director who worked with the likes of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, and rose to become the Artistic Director of London’s Southbank Centre - the sprawling brutalist theatre and art complex along the Thames in central London, where she created the Women of the World Festival to celebrate the achievements of women and girls and confront global gender injustice.
She tells Radio Davos how the reality and the rhetoric about women's place in society has evolved since she launched the WOW Festival, and addresses
"One of the reasons that the biosphere is growing in misogyny is because not only are women much more confident about speaking about their rights and their needs, but more men are also, maybe much more quietly, but also agreeing with them.
"So a lot of men are looking out for how they can contribute to a fairer world for everyone. But some men and some boys are finding it really threatening because they don't know, like, what is the new identity then? If girls can do as much as boys, are men still required to be the breadwinner? Are men still required to be the strong man? Are men still required to sort of, strut their stuff as, you know, 'studs'?
"And I think it needs men to talk to other men. It leads men to talk to boys and reassure them that actually, the idea of being a strong man doesn't require them to have to be a weightlifter. It doesn't require them to have to dominate a woman. Their status doesn't have to come from those things. But I do think it's got to be men that step forward and and talk to other men about this. It can't just be women trying to get men to come into their space. That's not going to work."
Agenda Dialogues - the full audio from some of the best Forum events
"We are down here at 340 metres depth ... we are actually sitting in complete darkness. We're feeling 30 atmospheres of pressures, 30 times what you're feeling in Davos ... Even for seasoned scientists like me, it is a nerve wracking but really exciting experience. And that's just because you have no idea what it is you're gonna see; the ocean is so unexplored and it's always changing. But it isn't all fun and games down here."
Imagine having a chat with a marine biologist who is in a submersible, hundreds of metres below the sea.
We did just that at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in January, and you can hear the full audio of the live session on Agenda Dialogues.
Check out all our podcasts on wef.ch/podcasts:
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