Project Brazen and PRX Present “People Like Us,” A New Podcast Hosted by Award-winning Global Journalist Kim Ghattas, Connecting Today’s Middle East with the World
Debuting October 3, new episodes will be released on Mondays. Ghattas hosts this multi-part series from Beirut, exploring pressing issues with leading voices from the region and beyond
Innovative content studio Project Brazen and award-winning public media organization PRX today announced “People Like Us,” a multi-part Project Brazen podcast hosted from Beirut by award-winning journalist and NYT best-selling author Kim Ghattas. The podcast will launch on Monday, October 3.
Executive produced by Project Brazen Co-Founders, bestselling authors, and Pulitzer finalists Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, as well as award-winning former BBC producer Jane Beresford, “People Like Us” is an interview series about the Middle East for a global audience. New episodes will be released on Mondays. The podcast will be available free to listeners everywhere across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Amazon Music.
An audio trailer is available now:
“Kim has long been one of our favorite journalists in the world, with unparalleled interviewing skills,” Hope said. “We’re thrilled to partner with her on this podcast. There’s no other show like ‘People Like Us’ out there.”
“I’ve spent my career trying to make sense of the world, breaking down complex stories for a world audience, so I’m thrilled to work with Project Brazen on a show that is focused on doing just that through fantastic interviews,” Ghattas said. “Whether you’re interested in the Middle East or international news, looking to hear powerful personal stories or connecting with people across borders on issues that matter to us all, this podcast is for you.”
“People Like Us” brings people together to connect the dots between today’s Middle East and the world, how it works, and why it matters to everyone wherever they are. With her inquisitive, friendly interview style, Ghattas speaks to filmmakers, activists, authors, refugees, sexual health experts, politicians, and public figures from the region and from around the world, exploring pressing issues in every episode, from Roe v. Wade to censorship in movies to impunity in Syria and Ukraine. With her guests, Ghattas brings a fresh and distinctive perspective on current events, as well as socio-economic and cultural trends, taking a step back from the headlines to reflect on larger themes.
Anchored in Ghattas’ home city of Beirut, the show challenges perceptions and pushes the envelope by discussing the big questions, uncovering surprising connections and the powerful personal stories of the show’s guests, all leading figures in their field from across the region and beyond, as well as ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Tapping into the renewed interest in international news, “People Like Us” speaks to the concerns of a young generation both in the U.S. and in the Arab world, as well as a global Arab diaspora.
In the first episode, Ghattas will share her personal thoughts on how the global order disintegrated even before the war in Ukraine and she draws parallels between Hong Kong, Beirut, and Kabul. Ghattas speaks to Lina Mounzer in Beirut, a writer and translator who captured the rage in Beirut after the port blast of August 2020 in her essays for The New York Times; Shawn Yuan, an award-winning journalist who covered protests in Beirut and Hong Kong; and Muqadessa Yourish, a former deputy minister of commerce who had to flee Kabul when U.S. troops withdrew in the summer of 2021.
Ghattas is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, and a child of the Lebanese war who has 20 years of on-air experience as a radio and television correspondent and anchor for the BBC and The Financial Times, covering the Middle East from Beirut and American foreign policy from Washington D.C. for both a U.S. and global audience. Now a contributing writer for The Atlantic, Ghattas is also the author of the NYT bestseller “The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power” (Holt 2013). In 2020, she published “Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Forty Year Rivalry that unraveled Culture, Religion and Collective Memory in the Middle East,” which was named a 100 Notable Book of 2020 by The New York Times. Her writing has been praised for making complex geopolitics accessible through personal storytelling.
“People Like Us” is also executive produced by Jane Beresford, a multi-award-winning radio producer who had a long career with BBC Current Affairs, where she produced highly researched radio documentaries from Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as interviews and lecture series including “The Reith Lectures.” The original score was created by Haig Papazian, violinist of the iconic indie rock band from Lebanon, Mashrou Leila, whose concerts electrified the region’s youth for years with its songs about LGBTQ rights, political protests, and freedom. Jamal Saleh designed the series logo and is the creative director of one of the most successful online news platforms in Lebanon, Megaphone News.
Project Brazen and PRX have partnered to release acclaimed podcasts to date, including the investigative story of a high-stakes scandal in the U.S. Navy, “Fat Leonard,” “Resistance: Stories from Ukraine,” and “Kabul Falling,” with first-person accounts from Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal from the region.
For more about Project Brazen, visit ProjectBrazen.com.
For more about PRX, visit PRX.org.
About Project Brazen
With an exciting slate of podcasts, books, documentaries, TV shows and films in development, Project Brazen is co-founded by bestselling authors and Pulitzer finalists Tom Wright and Bradley Hope. Based in London and Singapore, Project Brazen finances, produces and markets its own projects, working with production partners and journalists around the world. The company is represented by a team at United Talent Agency in Los Angeles and Levy Law in New York City. Project Brazen, together with SK Global, recently announced a deal with “Crazy Rich Asians” co-writer Peter Chiarelli to write a television adaptation chronicling the decades-long Fat Leonard U.S. Navy scandal, based on Project Brazen’s popular podcast “Fat Leonard,” which recently garnered a SOPA 2022 Award for Excellence in Audio Reporting. Other recent Project Brazen Original podcasts include “Kabul Falling” and “Resistance: Stories from Ukraine.”
Wright and Hope were longtime collaborators at the Wall Street Journal where they wrote groundbreaking front-page stories on some of the biggest events of the day and uncovered global crime. They led the newspaper’s team that broke open the 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (1MDB) scandal, a $6 billion fraud which brought down a government and forced Goldman Sachs to pay the largest ever penalty under U.S. bribery laws. Together they co-wrote the #1 international bestseller Billion Dollar Whale (2018) about the Malaysian playboy Jho Low at the center of the fraud, who ensnared banks, Hollywood celebrities and politicians in his schemes.
About PRX
PRX is a non-profit public media company specializing in audio journalism and storytelling. PRX serves independent producers and organizations by helping them connect to their most engaged, supportive audiences. One of the world’s leading podcast publishers, PRX works in partnership with TED, PBS, the Smithsonian, Futuro Media, GBH, Religion of Sports, and more. PRX is also home to Radiotopia, known as one of the most creative and successful podcast networks. In addition, PRX distributes trusted public radio programming to hundreds of stations nationwide, including “The World,” “The Moth Radio Hour,” “This American Life,” “Snap Judgment,” “Reveal,” “The Takeaway,” and “Latino USA.” PRX programs have been recognized by the Peabody Awards, the duPont-Columbia Awards, the IDA Documentary Awards, and the Pulitzers. In 2022, Futuro Media and PRX won a Pulitzer Prize. Visit PRX.org for more.
