This week on the podcast, AR sits down with musician and two-time JUNO winner, Kiran Ahluwalia. Kiran is a true innovator—her songs blend the music of India with influences from Mali and western blues, rock, R&B and jazz to create a sound unlike any other artist. Over the last two decades, Kiran has studied under masters of classical Indian music and collaborated with iconic North African artists, most notably the iconic desert blues group Tinariwen. On this episode, she talks about her new single, Pancake, her decision to leave her career in Canada to study music in India, and her family’s experience of the partition of India.

Meet Jude Chehab, the rising-star filmmaker whose debut documentary "Q" is making waves in the industry! Named one of Vogue Magazine's top documentaries of 2023, "Q" paints a mesmerizing portrait of her mother's relationship to an all-female religious group in Lebanon. It has won multiple awards including Best New Documentary Director at the Tribeca Film Festival, a Cinema Eye Honor, and earned Jude her spot on DOCNYC's '40 under 40' list. This week on the podcast, Jude tells us how she learned to weave a story that retains some level of mystery, but is grounded in humanity, as she learned from one of her film teachers, the legendary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

The wait is over…. Season 4 of This Being Human is finally here! We are so excited for another season filled with captivating stories and insightful discussions with an extraordinary lineup of guests. On our first episode, AR sits down with his long-time family-friend, author and former columnist for the Toronto Star, Haroon Siddiqui. They speak about Haroon’s love for Canada, how he got his start in journalism, and his latest book, My Name is Not Harry: A Memoir, a defiant and proud assertion of his Muslim identity in the face of Islamophobia.

Sandra Saenz is an internationally recognized makeup artist who is disrupting the beauty industry and breaking stereotypes. She is the first Mexican hijabi makeup artist to secure agency representation in the USA and has been described as a “positive rebel”. Her artistry has been featured in magazines and advertisements worldwide for Sephora. She’s currently a Global Brand Ambassador for KVD Beauty. Today, Sandra joins us to talk about the art of makeup, navigating the world of beauty as a Mexican Muslim, and her first video art exhibition.

Photographer Hassan Hajjaj has an iconic style that blends elements of pop art, hip hop culture and North African fashion. It spans series like Kesh Angels, which depicts biker women in Marrakesh, as well as celebrity photoshoots and album art. His works have been featured in renowned collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Institute of Islamic Cultures in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This week, he joins Abdul-Rehman to talk about developing his unique style, his initial reluctance to call himself an artist, and how he’s seen the photography world change for the next generation.

Wael Shawky is a visionary artist whose captivating work delves into the intersections of religious and artistic identity. Through the mediums of film, performance, and storytelling, Shawky seamlessly blends contemporary culture with historical tradition. Shawky's acclaimed trilogy of puppets and marionettes, "Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show Files," vividly recreates medieval clashes, while his three-part film, "Al Araba Al Madfuna," uses child actors to recount poetic myths, paying sincere homage to important narratives of the past. In 2010, he founded MASS Alexandria, an educational space that further exemplifies his commitment to fostering artistic exploration and understanding. In this episode, Shawky and Abdul-Rehman talk about the use of marionettes in his work, the malleability of history, and a recent project he worked on, titled “Desert: X”. 

Today on the podcast, Abdul-Rehman sits down with Shezad Dawood, the multidisciplinary artist behind the Aga Khan Museum’s current temporary exhibition, Night in the Garden of Love. Inspired by world-renowned Grammy award-winning musician, polymath, and composer Yusef Lateef, Shezad created an incredibly unique convergence of art, music, virtual reality, scent, and the imagined world — all through the lens of gardens and creation in the face of the climate crisis. In the episode, Shezad talks about Lateef’s unique view of the world, collaborating with another artist whom he never met, and his lifelong discomfort with choosing an artistic medium.

Night in the Garden of Love is on display at the Museum until May 5, 2024.

For this week's episode, we're revisiting one of our favourite conversations from Season 1 with Marina Tabassum. Marina Tabassum is an acclaimed Bangladeshi architect whose work includes Bangladesh’s underground Museum of Independence and the award-winning Bait Ur Rouf Mosque. She’s also the founder of Marina Tabassum Architects and the academic director of the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements. In this episode, she talks about working with local materials, the rich landscape of Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka, and why she designed $200 mobile houses to address climate change. Since this episode’s original release, Marina became the first architect from the Global South to receive the Lisbon Triennale Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is an artist whose work focuses on Black knowledge production, re-shaping history, and unlearning the things we think we know. Kameelah's projects, spanning photography, installations, text, sound, and more, have been shown around the globe and earned them a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. This week on the podcast, she joins us to talk about resisting easy definitions, finding new ways to think about the marks that we leave on the world, and their lifelong engagement with emerging technologies.

Earlier this month, we recorded our first-ever live episode of This Being Human! Our host Abdul-Rehman sat down with his sister, Ausma Malik. Ausma was the first woman in a hijab to be elected to public office in Canada, and the first Muslim-identifying, hijab-wearing woman on Toronto city council. She was recently appointed Deputy Mayor of Toronto. In this episode, Abdul-Rehman asks Ausma the questions only a brother can ask. She talks about some of the pivotal moments that sent her down her current path, her reluctant entrance to politics, and how family and art shaped her values.

As Pakistan’s first female architect, Yasmeen Lari left a major imprint on the country’s visual identity, with modern buildings like the Finance and Trade Centre, the Taj Mahal Hotel in Karachi, and the Pakistan State Oil Head Office. But her career later took a turn from working for the powerful few, towards assisting the most vulnerable members of society. She now focuses on the intersection of architecture, environmental activism and social justice, working to build sustainable structures for displaced people and helping to set up self-sufficient economies. In this episode of This Being Human, Abdul-Rehman and Yasmeen talk about her unique approach, which she calls Barefoot Social Architecture.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali is a coffee historian, entrepreneur, and innovator. After several years as a community organizer working on civil rights issues affecting immigrant communities, Mokhtar began focusing on his family’s roots as coffee farmers in Yemen. Seeking to reverse Yemen’s nearly lost art of coffee cultivation, he started his own coffee company, Port of Mokha. His work has been described as the spark that ignited the Yemeni coffee revolution. Mokhtar's life and journey was immortalized in Dave Eggers's book, The Monk of Mokha. In this episode, he talks to Abdul-Rehman about this journey, which continues ten years on.

Humaira Abid gathers ordinary objects from everyday life and transforms them into something extraordinary. Her wood sculpture and paintings — known for their intricate details — depict human relationships and contain strong social messages around topics like motherhood and the plight of refugees. In this episode of This Being Human, Humaira talks to Abdul-Rehman about why she chose the male-dominated craft of wood sculpture to tell stories about women and how she uses her art to encourage conversations about taboo topics.

Jamaluddin Aram is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and writer from Kabul, Afghanistan. He is the associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated film Buzkashi Boys, and his debut novel, Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday was published in June, 2023. On this episode of This Being Human, Abdul-Rehman and Jamaluddin discuss how he fell in love with writing, the complexity of war stories, and his experience growing up in Afghanistan. 

Shahjehan is a voice-over artist, actor, and musician based in Boston. He is the current host of the award-winning King of the World Podcast, where he explores his life as a Pakistani American Muslim. In this episode of This Being Human, Shahjehan Khan reflects on his history with music, addiction and identity in post-9/11 America. He and Abdul-Rehman talk about his time with the seminal Muslim punk band The Kominas, mental health, his attempt to find himself while living in Pakistan, and where he stands today, as an aging punk rocker who’s finding a new path in acting and producing.

Zakir Hussain’s name is practically synonymous with the tablas. His work ranges from classical Indian compositions to Hollywood film scores to collaborations with rockstars like George Harrison and Van Morrison. His latest albums are the collaboration As We Speak and Shakti’s This Moment. In this episode, Zakir Hussain talks to Abdul-Rehman about how his craft continues to evolve at the age of 72, his father Alla Rakha who introduced tablas to the West, his mother’s crucial role in his career, and what prevented him from becoming a rock drummer.

Dr. Deqo Mohamed spent her teen years coordinating with NGOs, teaching, and arranging breakfast for thousands of displaced people. That’s because her mother, Dr. Hawa Abdi, was the founder of a sanctuary in Somalia called Hope Village. The village provided healthcare, education and more to 90,000 people during its peak. It earned Dr. Habdi a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize. In this episode, Dr. Deqo Mohamed speaks candidly about growing up in Hope Village, sharing her mom with thousands of others, and how she and her sister are carrying on the family legacy.

Nazeem Hussain has fast become one of the biggest stars of Australian comedy, and a much-loved television and radio personality. He is the creator and star of two television comedy shows, Legally Brown (2013-14) and Orange Is the New Brown (2018). Nazeem's Netflix special 'Nazeem Hussain: Public Frenemy', filmed in Montreal at the Just for Laughs Festival, started streaming globally in 2019, introducing Nazeem to a legion of new fans, and critical acclaim. He has recently released the children’s book Hy-Larious Hyena! and is currently working on the sequel. Nazeem talks to AR about being an outsider who broke through in Australia’s comedy scene.

Noor is an award-winning journalist and producer, a touring speaker for over 10 years, and has told stories in every medium, from radio and print to documentaries and brand campaigns. In 2019, Noor founded At Your Service Imprint, a consulting and production company telling representative stories as a form of service. In 2022, Noor launched her investigative series Rep, in partnership with iHeartMedia, a story about the stories we tell. She joins AR to talk about why she stopped worrying about representing others - and started creating spaces for people to tell stories on their own terms.

Murad Subay is a street artist from Yemen. His campaigns such as “Faces of War,” “Ruin” and “Color the Walls of Your Street” reflect his experiences living through revolution and war. He talks to AR about what drives him to paint, his mixed feelings about being called the “Yemeni Banksy,” and about collaborating with the public on his work.

The heavy metal band Voice of Baceprot was formed by three middle schoolers in a small town in Indonesia. Over the years, they built an international following that includes rock legends like Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Slash from Guns N’ Roses. They joined AR from a studio in Jakarta, where they were at work on their debut album, to talk about falling in love with rock music, finding their voice, and how they overcame their families’ skepticism about their musical careers.

Coleman Barks is an American poet and translator whose translations brought Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th-Century Persian mystic, to mass contemporary audiences, turning him into one of the most popular poets in the modern English-speaking world. Barks’ free verse interpretations of Rumi have at times been the top-selling poetry books in America. Now 86 years old, Barks joins AR to talk about how he was given a mission to bring Rumi’s words to the masses, which turned into a lifelong pursuit. He also talks about how his interest lately has shifted from Rumi to Rumi’s teacher, Shams Tabrizi.

Abbas Rattani is an academic, entertainer, and founder of MIPSTERZ. He is a strong advocate for individuality and self-expression in minority communities. Abbas talks about co-founding the MIPSTERZ collective, and their decade-long mission to change the face of young Muslims in America. MIPSTERZ is a non-traditional arts and culture collective for emerging Muslim creatives that enables and amplifies Muslim creative voices by presenting and producing original works for general audiences.

Najwa Zebian is a bestselling writer of poetry and inspirational books, including Mind Platter and Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul. She also shares simple, yet profound words of wisdom with her 1.3 million Instagram followers. She speaks with raw honesty about how writing saved her from aimlessness, about her struggles immigrating to Canada as a teenager, and about where she finds the words that tell so many people what they need to hear at the right moment.

Tasneem Alsultan is a photographer whose work has captured major changes in Saudi culture. She has worked with The New York Times, National Geographic and others. But she also documents the more ordinary aspects of life.

Continuing our best-of episodes, we revisit Salim-Sulaiman's 2021 This Being Human interview. Salim and Sulaiman Merchant are among India's most respected composers, having scored more than 100 films including Kurbaan, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Fashion, Band Baaja Baaraat, Aaja Nachleand Heroine, around 20 TV shows and composed several records incorporating cinematic, folk, electronica and Sufi influences to their music.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is one of the directors of the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel. We revisit our 2021 interview, where she talks about her earlier career, exposing social injustices in unflinching documentaries like Saving Face and A Girl in the River. It’s a journey that took her from a childhood in Karachi, Pakistan, to the offices of The New York Times, to winning two Academy Awards.