Reflecting on the UN Summits with Wame Jallow

Summary

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Podcast Summary: A Shot in the Arm – Reflecting on the UN Summits with Wame Jallow

Host: Ben Plumley
Guest: Wame Jallow, Executive Director, MTV Staying Alive Foundation
Date: October 12, 2024

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Overview

In this episode, Ben Plumley and Wame Jallow reflect on the whirlwind of global health, climate, and youth advocacy events surrounding the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) week in New York City, including the UN Summit of the Future, Climate Week, and the Youth Power Summit. They dissect the state of global policymaking, the interconnectedness—and persistent siloing—of urgent crises, and the enduring role of young people, storytelling, and mental health in driving equitable solutions.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

The Overlapping Storm of Summits (00:53–02:24)

• UNGA Week’s ‘Perfect Storm’: Multiple summits and side events (UNGA, Summit of the Future, Climate Week, Youth Power Summit) collided in New York, leading to both energy and confusion.
• Siloed Conversations: Despite many overlapping issues, event structure kept discussions fragmented.

  “It was actually quite a pity that we didn’t have more integrated spaces for all three to kind of like be combined as a full on conversation.” – Wame Jallow (01:15)

Inside vs. Outside the UN: Where Action Happens (02:24–03:55)

• Most Action Outside: Ben points out most buzz came from external gatherings like the Clinton Global Initiative and side summits rather than inside the UN itself.
• Lost Focus on Key Issues: Major discussions (e.g., Pact for the Future, antimicrobial resistance) risked being overshadowed.

The Challenge of Siloes & Missed Connections (03:16–03:55)

• Connecting the Dots: Wame stresses the long-standing issue of siloed approaches and the need for meaningful integration—"Otherwise it’s siloed conversations and we’ll keep having those."
• Civil Society’s Marginalization: Many civil society actors only get heard at the UN, highlighting the need for more consistent, country-level engagement (07:08–08:19).

Youth, Data, and Optimism (03:55–05:27)

• Global Listening Project: Ben and Wame praise the initiative for capturing youth perspectives across 70 countries, moving the narrative beyond a crisis lens for young people.

  “You did something that is a big glaring gap—data.” – Wame Jallow (05:00)

Polycrisis and the Role (or Lack Thereof) of Nation States (05:40–07:08)

• A Moment of Polycrises: Ben lists ongoing emergencies—COVID, H5N1, Middle East conflicts, Ukraine, and the US political climate.
• Is the UN (or nation-states) Fit for Purpose?: Ben argues the core problem may be outdated reliance on nation-states:

  “It’s the member states, is the nation state fit for purpose?... relying on nation states, it just doesn’t feel adequate.” – Ben Plumley (06:47–07:03)

The ‘Behaving’ Narrative — Civil Society vs. Authoritarian Worldviews (08:29–10:50)

• Authoritarian ‘Obedience’ vs. Civil Society’s Voice: Rising rhetoric from some countries that civil society voices are ‘tokenistic’ or in conflict with order. Wame counters with examples of youth-driven change empowered by digital platforms:

  “What does it mean to behave?... If that’s not behaving, then I don’t know what is.” – Wame Jallow (09:39–10:50)

Mental Health as a Crosscutting Priority (11:09–14:44)

• Mental Health’s Prominence: Wame identifies mental health as her UNGA week highlight—“Mental health prevailed in terms of the key theme for this conference for me, and that was powerful.” (11:55).
• Integrated Approach: At MTV Staying Alive, mental health is woven into broader youth health narratives, not siloed.
• Cultural and Systemic Barriers: Limited vocabulary around mental health in many cultures and lack of access to services. The urgent need for early education and normalization—“Education. So educating young people about what mental health is from the onset.” (14:50).

Resource Allocation & Peer Support (15:54–18:27)

• Insufficient Funding and Differentiated Care: Mental health receives <5% of health budgets; of this, most goes to hospital-centric care. There's a pressing need for community and non-clinical support systems, including models like peer hotlines.

Protest, Security, and the Meaning of the UN (18:33–21:13)

• Protests Marginalized: Wame is troubled by the sidelining of protesters, seeing it as emblematic of growing detachment from people’s voices.
• Ben’s Reflection: “The vision of the United Nations is about the people…not just the nation state.” (20:43)
• Lack of Implementation: Wame laments declarations often aren’t operationalized—“We come back next year and do it all over again.” (21:13)

The Power & Ethics of Storytelling (22:35–24:55)

• Resisting ‘Story Harvesting’: Young advocates urge that communities own their narratives, not have their stories extracted by outsiders.

  “We need to stop harvesting the stories and the issues from people. Let the communities that have those issues speak up and let them be the ones to create those issues.” – Waisha (as referenced by Wame) (22:40)

• Imagination & Policy: Ben references ‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson, suggesting policy must be accompanied by bold narratives for change.

Youth-Created Content and Media Democratization (25:10–29:52)

• MTV’s ‘PrEP Fairy’ Campaign: A youth-led, creative South African initiative celebrated for using humor and relatability in health messaging.
• Platforms Evolve: Democratized content creation—short-form (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts) and long-form podcasts—are key to reaching new audiences, embracing the strengths of each format.

  “The podcast platform gives us an opportunity and it’s cross-generational…” – Ben Plumley (27:07)

Trust and Information in Crisis (30:37–34:07)

• Who Do You Trust?:
  • Ben: Trusted Tony Fauci and (controversially) Debbie Birx during COVID, but questions where he’d turn in a future crisis, noting societal ‘amnesia’ post-pandemic.
  • Wame: Relied on a collective of experts, community-driven sessions, but is uncertain given the current cacophony of information.
• Distrust in Twitter/X: Both agree the platform is no longer a trusted information space.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Siloed Conversations:

  “If you didn’t know what was happening across the street, you wouldn’t participate... connecting the dots in a more meaningful way.” – Wame (03:16)

• On the Nation State vs. The UN:

  “Is the nation state fit for purpose? So for climate, for conflict, for pandemic preparation, relying on nation states…it just doesn’t feel adequate.” – Ben (06:47–07:03)

• On Youth Voice:

  “If that’s not behaving, then I don’t know what is.” – Wame (10:50)

• On Prioritizing Mental Health:

  “It has been very much integrated and interwoven and we’ve tried to bring it out in a way that is also ethically responsible…” – Wame (12:57)

• On Protest Suppression:

  “The barricading off of protests and pushing it far away from the conversation, far away from public eye, I think was quite bizarre and painful for me to see.” – Wame (19:01)

• On Community-Led Storytelling:

  “Let the communities that have those issues speak up and let them be the ones to create those issues.” – Wame, relaying Waisha’s intervention (22:40)

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Key Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 00:53 – 02:24: The ‘perfect storm’ of overlapping NYC summits
• 03:16 – 03:55: The pitfalls of siloed events
• 05:00 – 05:27: Praising the Global Listening Project's data
• 08:29 – 10:50: The ‘behaving’ narrative and rising authoritarianism
• 11:09 – 14:44: Mental health as a cross-cutting and urgent theme
• 18:33 – 21:13: Protests ignored and UN’s purpose for ‘the people’
• 22:35 – 24:55: Storytelling and imagination for future policy
• 25:10 – 27:52: PrEP Fairy campaign, youth content, and platform changes
• 30:37 – 34:07: COVID, future crises, and trust in information sources

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Conclusion

Ben and Wame deliver a compelling post-mortem on UNGA week, interrogating the system’s shortcomings, celebrating youth agency and creative advocacy, and calling for better integration of voices, stories, and solutions—especially for mental health and future generations. While honest about frustrations, they ultimately reaffirm the essential role of optimism, storytelling, and grassroots power in moving global health and equity forward.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to A Shot in the Arm podcast. I'm your host, Ben Plumley, and this is a podcast about innovation and equity in global health. Well, I'm joined by friend of the pod, Wame Jalo, who is the executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. It's September, it's New York, so it must mean the UN General assembly week and that's where we've been. Hey Wame, you look remarkably refreshed after a week of meetings and negotiations and walking.

[B]

Yeah, walking New York and walking. That's the only way to actually get by. Actually, the.

New York State Department, they actually then said if you want to get around the city, just walk everywhere. It's actually a good health practice too.

[A]

Yeah, you've certainly got your steps in. I know I have for the entire year perhaps. So, yeah, UN General assembly like we did last year, but also this year. The summit of the future.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So what has it been like for you? What have you been up to?

[B]

Lots of things happening. Like you said, this was a collision of a perfect storm of many different conferences all in one. So in addition to those, you had Climate Week as well. And then there was the Youth Power Summit that also was held just the weekend before as pre conferences. So a lot was happening and had to engage in each of those spaces because I think it was important to sort of see where everyone's heading in terms of the direction and the conversations and to figure out how we can put it all together. It was actually quite a pity that we didn't have more integrated spaces for all three to kind of like be combined as a full on conversation. So I spend a lot of the time listening, I spend a lot of the time learning. There's a lot to learn, new spaces. You know, I was very interested to hear that lead, for example, lead poisoning is a growing pandemic now amongst many communities and there's now thoughts around how to engage in that space. I spend a lot of time engaging and engaging with young people, which I think is really the foundation of all of those conversations is where is the future going for young people and how can we participate?

[A]

So a question for you. Did you go anywhere near the un? Did you go inside the un?

[B]

Yes, I did.

[A]

So I think you're one of the few people who did. What has really struck me during this week of the United nations is that basically the action was happening outside of the un, whether it was the Clinton Global Initiative, this Youth Power Summit you referred to. And so some of the really big things that were going on inside The UN like the Pact of the future, which really is about, you know, making the UN fit for purpose in the 21st century. And then of course we've had the high level session on antimicrobial resistance. All of this seemed to have got lost a little bit. I think as you were saying, too much going on.

[B]

Absolutely. And too siloed as well of a conversation. And if you didn't know what was happening across the street, you wouldn't participate. And there were some very powerful spaces where people engage in many different issues. And all I could think of did you speak to so and so do you know that this session is happening? How do we better connect these thoughts? And I think these are lessons that we've been. They're age old lessons and issues that we've been saying for a very long time. But genuinely, if we really want to think about changing things in the future, this is one of them, connecting the dots in a more meaningful way. Otherwise it's siloed conversations and we'll keep having those siloed conversations.

[A]

Well, one conversation that you and I had was right at the start, the Global Listening Project organized a formal side event for the UN Summit of the Future Action Days. So we had an action event which of course has become a shot in the arm podcast episode in its own right.

And that was really good. And I felt there was a lot of attention on the sort of surround sound whole person health of young people and the idea that it's not a message of oh, young people are just lonely, the 18 to 24 year olds are facing huge mental challenges. No, the level of optimism in the future future. The trust that can be built and nurtured. So much to build on. And I guess.

That'S sort of a principle that the Staying Alive foundation itself truly believes in, right?

[B]

No, absolutely. And I want to congratulate Global Listing Project because you did something that is a big glaring gap data. We don't have enough information about those issues. And it was really quite powerful to see it consolidated 70 countries. I'm sure that wasn't easy to pull together, but having those insights I think gives us an opportunity to co create solutions for young people. So that was really brilliant, well done on that.

[A]

Oh well, thank you. I'll take praise wherever I can because it's actually felt to me a bit of a downer this week.

There is.

We'Re in a moment of poly crises.

We haven't satisfactorily come out of COVID 19.

There is the continued risk of H5N1 what appears to be a human to human transition in Missouri, I think.

There is of course the conflagration in the Middle east with Lebanon now being sucked in. And then of course there is Ukraine. And then right on top of that cherry, on top of the icing on top of the cake is the U.S. presidential election. Yes.

And so I was wondering, so here's what I thought. So much of the conversation has been around whether the UN is fit for purpose. And certainly you see a lot of.

Incapacity, potential irrelevance. But do you know what? I don't think it is the UN that is.

Whether there are questions about fit for purpose. It's the member states, is the nation state fit for purpose? So for climate, for conflict, for pandemic preparation, relying on nation states.

We'Ve got to work with what we've got to work with, but it's just doesn't feel adequate.

[B]

Well, I think part of the problem is that before we get here, these conversations should be happening at country level and there's an absence of that, like in a very meaningful way. So you find that most of the times you get to this UN General assembly session and it feels very detached and devolved of what's happening in their home countries. Civil society don't get heard at home. So they come to the U.N. they come to New York, and this is the only platform that they have available to express it. So that also needs to shift. We need to create more safe spaces to have the harder conversations and ask ourselves what will it take for us to be able to really come up with solutions that are meaningful and future face forwarding in that sense. So that's problem number one, Ben. And without that, without civil society engaging with governments, without policymakers going into the communities and seeing the issues, coming up with solutions and then coming to these UN sessions at a larger scale and then declaring how they are moving forward, then no, we're going to keep having the same issues circle around and sound like a broken record.

[A]

So I get that to some degree. But it's something I put to Ashwin Vasan, now the former.

Head of health for New York City, a health commissioner. And that's one worldview. But there's been another worldview.

On sale here this week. Now, it wasn't successful in derailing the pact for the pact of the future in the negotiations, but a worldview led by Russia, with Iran, North Korea, that says that the ability to express yourself, the right even to express yourself, is not adequate to deal with these crises. If you just behaved if you just did as you were told, you would, you know, the country could, the nation state could move together in a particular way. And I sense there's a. It's almost like back to the future. We've gone back 20, 30 years about whether we actually believe civil society or whether we believe the voices of young people are relevant or anything more than just tokenistic. Did you pick up on that?

[B]

Okay, first of all, what does it mean to behave? I think that is the first question. I'm not sure there's a single definition in terms of what that looks like. Look, I mean, fundamentally, young people's needs have changed. We're not in the 1920s anymore. There's a lot at stake in terms of young lives from a intersectional context, from a health perspective, from a rights perspective, from social justice and climate change perspective. So unlike the rest of us dinosaurs, if I can put it that way, where we dealt with, we didn't have mass media, we didn't have social media engagement the way young people have right now. I mean, look at what's happening in Kenya.

One of the things that made the movement there of young people, the voices heard, was the social media engagement. So it's a very different time. And so I still ask the question, what does it mean to actually behave? And is it not the right of young people to stand up for the things that they believe will make their future more progressive? If that's not behaving, then I don't know what is.

[A]

Well, good luck on that. I mean, no, I agree with you, of course.

You know, maybe my pragmatic pessimism is perhaps getting the better of me. So.

The UN this week, what was your highlight?

[B]

So for I know we talk about mental health, we've talked about mental health in many different ways, and it has been acknowledged as an issue. It was really great this time to see the conversation push the bar a bit, not only just in terms of, of recognition of mental health, but the fact that we need to also figure out what the solutions are. So the highlight of my week was how many times mental health came up as a topic of conversation in all the different areas. Whether it was conversation around health, whether it was a conversation about climate, whether it was a conversation around rights, Mental health prevailed in terms of the key theme for this conference for me, and that was powerful.

[A]

Do you.

I mean, in the context of mtv, staying alive, in the context of the work you do in generating youth targeted and youth generated content, do you see mental health being a priority? Is it something that stands on its own or is it something that you weave into.

Other stories of people's lives?

[B]

Well, for us is interwoven because I mean, if you talk about from a young person centered approach, mental health is not a singular issue in their lives. It's part and parcel of many other issues that prop up. So we've seen mental health, the consequence of mental health when young people don't have access to sexual reproductive health, you know, or we've seen the impact of mental health when young people feel frustrated and depressed, when they're just not seen or heard. So mental health for us is very cross cutting.

But unfortunately it's one of those things that we call asylum pandemics because it hasn't been spoken about and needs to be de stigmatized in terms of recognizing what are the different types of mental health definitions in that sense. So it's not singular for us, it's been very much integrated and interwoven and we've tried to bring it out in a way that is also ethically responsible because we recognize in many of the countries there is an absence of mental health services.

There's an absence of differentiated mental health services. Some people need hospitalization, others need therapy, others need a conversation with somebody. Others need to just know how to define it and call it for what it is.

[A]

Well, that's right. I mean, in many cultures the concept of mental health is not something necessarily. That's part of the vocabulary.

[B]

Absolutely. How do you explain to someone that I'm feeling sad? You know, many. It's interesting when you talk about the language and how even the translation of what mental health in a different language means something totally different. So yeah, so coming from that perspective, understanding that there is an absence of those services, we've tried to say how do we do more preventative mechanisms, early warning signs that help empower young people to take action before it becomes a crisis. You know, we keep working in crisis and we've been doing this age, it's an age old problem, like across all of our health burdens. It's always, we're always operating in crisis mode. And you know, this is a real opportunity to take a step back, learn the lessons that we had, like from hiv, for example, and focus on prevention.

[A]

All right, Wami, let me put you on the spot. Give me an example of an early intervention that would work.

[B]

Education. So educating young people about what mental health is from the onset. Why do we hide it? Why are we not talking more about it? Why are we not putting it on screen and normalizing these conversations through that is when the young people can then say, oh, okay, this is what mental health is. How do I make sure that I can prevent it? Or how do I make sure that I can actually ask for help when I begin to recognize certain symptoms and signs? So that's how you start education, bringing the awareness, role modeling it, getting people who have gone through it to actually speak up and say, this is my journey. Create normal, normalize the conversation. That's how we begin.

[A]

Yeah, that makes sense. Particularly the last piece of normalizing it. Because again, back to a comment you've made consistently in your time as executive director of Staying Alive. There's no point generating demand if that demand cannot be supplied. And.

It is one thing to say, yeah.

How are you, how are you feeling if there are not resources to access to help you address that? And if the stigma and discrimination around mental health is not, you know, it's not truly addressed so that someone who's out the other side or someone who says, yeah, I struggle with this, but I've still got a career, I'm still a leader, I'm still an influencer.

[B]

Absolutely. And let me also add to that because, you know, it also requires for us to take a hard look at how we are spending the fund, where the funds are going for this. In many countries, you know, mental health is less than 5% of the health budget and 80 to 90% of that funding goes towards hospital care. Hospital care, where there are limited beds, long waiting lists, sometimes six months out. And what does a family do with, you know, a loved one who is in need right now, services or commodities or medicine and not able to access it?

[A]

You're talking about the British National Health Service there?

[B]

Yes, well, one of them, yes. Yeah. And it's a major issue. And again, it speaks to the fact that whenever we talk about mental health, people think hospital. They don't think differentiated care. Maybe somebody can. For example, we have a peer education program where we have peer educators that go out into communities and really talk about hard stuff, access to services, rights around HIV prevention, et cetera. And they see a lot. They see communities struggling with gender based violence.

And many other social inequities. Now, for somebody who spends their day, the whole day seeing these disparities, what happens when they get home? Who do they speak to as peer educators? So one of the things that we've been trying to think through is how do we also empower the caregivers themselves, the people who are doing the work.

And doing things like having a hotline to call somebody and just Have a conversation around, well, I'm not feeling well today. This is what I've seen. These are my circumstances. It doesn't have to be in a health facility. Let's start branching out. Using online services, hotlines, telephones, other ways of communicating and creating community around these conversations is important in the digital space.

[A]

Okay, well, changing attack a little bit.

Many people. The history says the UN was formed after the Second World War. Many of us, after weeks like this, think it was actually created towards the end of the last century by Lewis Carroll, because this could have been Alice in Wonderland or Alice through the Looking Glass. It's so bizarre. What has been the most surprising, bizarre, infuriating thing that you've seen this week?

[B]

Oh, gosh. How protesters have been ignored. That is the painful part. You know, as much as you said the UN was the UN and, you know, some people had access, some people didn't.

Protests have always been a healthy part of the conversation in any of these meetings. And the, the barricading off of protests and pushing it far away from the conversation, far away from public eye, I think was quite bizarre and painful for me to see because in that protest, they're equally a voice that matters in reflection and introspection around what needs to happen. So, yeah, it's becoming more and more glaring how protests are being pushed back. People are not allowed to express themselves and to voice. And so many protesters went to the embassies, they protested in front of the embassies. And that didn't look. It didn't make it for a consolidated, larger voice. Small little pocket segmented protests wasn't cohesive at all, which didn't help.

[A]

On the other hand, of course, you've got heads of state, the ones who.

[B]

Need to hear it.

[A]

Who need to hear. Yes, but you've got them coming in to this small, confined space on First Avenue. You've had two assassination attempts of sorts on one of the US Presidential candidates.

Maybe the new reality that we live in is one where you've got to take security much, much more seriously. I don't know. I mean, I'm with you in that. I think.

The UN technically actually is about the nation state. The members of the United nations are nation states. But really the vision of the United nations is about the people. It's about humans, it's about our societies. And I don't know how we seem to be moving away from, you know, efforts over the last 30 years to try and reconcile that to some degree.

[B]

And then my question is, then, who are. Who is. Who are they? Solving problems. For if you're not listening to the voice of the people, it has to be community led. It has to come from the people being the ones to say, well, here are the issues, but here are the opportunities as well. Because at the end of the day then we will be misaligned in terms of what gets created from a policy perspective versus what is the need on the ground. And you know, it's like in true sense, each time we get back to our countries, get back to business as usual and a fancy declaration that's been signed and lots of pictures taken sits on the shelf. It's not operationalized, it's not mainstream, there's no ownership and we come back next year and do it all over again. So it has to really be flipped on its head and allow for also more people to be present in those spaces as well. Right. Like I want to see, you know, other people that look like me, that talk like me, that are in my community being given the platform to share their experiences, to share their learnings. And for that to be considered, there was a very powerful intervention by young people both at the UNAIDS high level meeting, but also at your Global Listening Project session. That said, it was Waisha, I believe.

[A]

She said for us, very own assistant producer. Right, done.

[B]

There you go. But she said a very powerful thing for us, Bias. And when she made that statement, you know, it was about two things. One, we need to stop harvesting the stories and the issues from people. Let the communities that have those issues speak up and let them be the ones to create those issues. So when she spoke, I had chills, Ben, because I said, but this is what we know to be true. But is it happening? It's not. And it's time.

[A]

Yeah.

I've also been thinking about storytelling this week. And so this goes to your point.

That if we don't have the reality around us that we want.

Sure, we look at what the evidence tells us and sure, we look at what the policy ramifications of that are. But our imaginations, our creativity also has to come to bear. So, you know, there is a book that I read last year and I just put it down and then Bill Gates sends out a LinkedIn post saying that it's one of his top books and recommends. It was by the author Kim Stanley Robinson, and it's called Ministry of the Future. And it envisages a scenario where essentially a UN entity is created.

Responsible for future populations. And so what it does is try and get concrete, urgent action on climate particularly.

And in Robinson's Book. It's still a tough job getting all of these countries to commit to things, but he envisages a scenario where we can, where we can do that. So, you know, if I'm looking at a positive coming out of this week, I think of stories like that, narratives like that.

[B]

And what was your highlight for this week?

[A]

Oh, I thought you were never going to ask.

So actually, actually my highlight because I was then on a panel with you at the Youth Power Summit.

And actually I think I've raised this before, but it was really nice to see it again. It's a public service announcement, a PSA that MTV Staying Alive foundation in South Africa has produced, the Prep Fairy. And only one of these little service, little major public service announcements is out, you know, and obviously there are new technologies, but they're not licensed, so you can't really. But I think she is fabulous. We'll put a link in the show, notes to this. And I just want to make a very public plea to get more prep fairies.

[B]

We need more of them. The humor, the outfit.

[A]

She is so cool. She's so cool.

[B]

Yes. And the beauty of that is because you have young content creators. When you empower young people to tell the story, to make the stories, the innovation behind it is beautiful. So, yeah, I totally agree with you.

And looking forward to seeing more of that and just curious what your thoughts are around. How do you get more young people to do content creation?

[A]

Well, I think one of the things that is so exciting at the moment.

Notwithstanding the withering.

Death on the vine of the social network platform formerly called Twitter, is an incredible democratization of technology, particularly through things like cell phones. And it's something that you and I have been really interested in, in giving young people the tools to create their own content, distribute it on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, wherever, on YouTube shorts, and tell your own stories. And I think that's, I think that's really interesting. Now I'm an old.

Global health activist, an advocate and strategist, but as you know, for the last five years I've really got into podcasts, not only listening to them, but creating them. And I think that the podcast platform gives us an opportunity and it's cross generational. I'm not saying that young people don't listen or watch podcasts, far from it. But it does give us the opportunity to create both long form and short form content that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to have done. And so podcasts have created a really good opportunity for me to share the stories of People and issues that I find interesting and fascinating.

[B]

You've hit on something that all of us are debating in the space, which is the format, long form and short form. There's some theories that people's attention span is very limited and therefore short form is better. There are others that argue that it's important to have more information and sharing and it be more detailed. What's your preference? What do you think works for your audiences?

[A]

I think both. So we produce podcasts like this that run for 35, 40 minutes. Sometimes they run over an hour, not too often. And then Waisha comes in and suggests short clips from those that she then places on TikTok and Insta. And so you can do both. And it is interesting that I think the long form approach allows you to explore things in more detail. I mean, I recorded a podcast here about MRNA vaccines and the challenges and opportunity of local manufacture across the continent of Africa. Now there's no way you could cover everything in a 90 second clip.

[B]

That is true.

[A]

But there are clips from that that are really good teasers that are things that raise questions, put thoughts in your mind. I want to know more. And I think if you are inquisitive, short form and long form content work really well together. And I think our job is to make people inquisitive.

[B]

Absolutely. Our digital manager always says you start off on TikTok with a 30 second, you get buzzed with a topic, you then go, you ask yourself the question. I'm curious further. And young people then move from one platform to the other to the other and it's a snowballing of, of gathering information and insights. So I like that answer.

[A]

So I do have a TikTok account. I also have an Instagram account and it's really interesting. And a YouTube short account. YouTube shorts have become very important to me. So YouTube shorts, I'm looking at recipes. Most of my algorithms, algorithms come up with food.

TikTok is.

Japanese pop stars don't ask.

And Instagram is pug videos. And it's so interesting that I go to these three for very different things.

[B]

Well, it speaks to where you get your information, your trusted sources. And seeing that, I'm actually curious to ask you two questions.

[A]

Okay. There's no guarantee I'm going to answer.

[B]

Them, but, well, it's your turn. So during COVID where did you go to? Who did you trust most in terms of information?

[A]

Now there's a reason you're asking this, because these are two questions from the Global Listening project that Heidi Larson, Waisha Rafael and I have been asking of a lot of people, who did you trust during COVID and then who would you turn to in the event of a future crisis? Well, during COVID I confessed, I turned to Tony Fauci, and what he said mattered. Actually, I will also give a big shout out to Debbie Burks, who was maligned during the course of COVID in the United States. But I think she, between the two of them, they set the sort of the guardrails of where I knew information was coming from and going and going to.

Who would I trust in the event of a future crisis? Oh, that's really difficult. Now, I would like to say I would go back to public health authorities, but I'm really nervous. After Covid, we have not really learned the lessons of that pandemic, and we're doing.

What our predecessors did after the 1918 flu and generating this collective sense of amnesia.

So let me put the questions to you then. Who did you trust in Covid and who would you turn to for a future crisis?

[B]

Well, in terms of who I turned to, it was actually a collection of.

Experts. You know, we. At the time, I was working for an organization that did a lot of treatment education for communities. And it was really, really quite tough because there was a lot of information sharing in many different spaces and everyone was saying something slightly different from the other. So we had to work at consolidating that information with experts, doctors.

People who are technical experts in the area of COVID who were developing at the time and put out the most basic information as much as possible. So that became a trusted source because we had several conversations led by communities, by the way, because they were the ones who were asking the question of what do I do? And in trying to answer that question, we were now also unpacking tidbits of information. So that became my trusted source. And I use our own references at the time as a way of just knowing what to do during that time of COVID going forward. That's very difficult. Now, I agree with you because there is. There are too many platforms. Everyone has something to say. Everyone is an expert. I know people say Google is your friend, but sometimes, yeah, if you don't know what you look for, you can be derailed. So it. That's a hard question to answer, but we.

[A]

I tell you what, though, I know where I won't go for information.

[B]

Where is that?

[A]

The social network platform formerly called Twitter.

[B]

Where?

[A]

On that merry note, I guess that's the end of our digestion of the 79th UN General assembly session. It's been really fun doing this, Wame.

[B]

Yes. And we should do more of them.

[A]

We should.

[B]

There's lots to say. I mean, after these conferences, the conversations die down, but let's really keep them alive.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I'll hold you to that.

[B]

All right. Sounds great. Thank you, Ben.

[A]

No. Cheers. I'll let you get something to eat now because someone hasn't eaten today.

[B]

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Safe travels home.

[A]

Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you to Wame Jalo, the executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. Thanks to Waisha Raphael, who got quite a few call outs in this particular podcast, our assistant producer. A big thanks to Eric Espera, our director and producer of news media. And finally, a big thanks to you. Don't forget to subscribe and give us five stars wherever you consume your content and have a great week and a safe week, everyone.