Global’s new podcast, The Shelina Show, has premiered today with History Hit’s Dan Snow joining as the first guest.
The 12-part weekly podcast series, hosted by writer and advertising agency executive Shelina Janmohamed, is a deep-dive into news and current affairs topics featuring open discussions with a range of experts including Snow and stand-up comedian Ahir Shah. During the episode, Janmohamed also announced that she will be publishing a new book on the British Empire titled The Story of Now: How the British Empire Shaped Our World.
“One of the things that I've always tried to advocate for is having a greater range of voices but also I’ve talked about my own journey of finding my voice,” Janmohamed, who is vice-president of Islamic marketing at Ogilvy, told PodPod.
“It’s a very conversational, collaborative approach to understanding the world and if I'm on this journey maybe other people are on this journey too.
“I want people to enjoy listening, to feel smarter, and to have new things to think about when we approach our public and national conversation so that we can have a more informed discussion.”
In the first episode of the podcast, Janmohamed spoke to Snow about the influence that Andrew Tate - a misogynistic online personality - has on young men, why Snow considers himself the “ultimate nepo baby” and how that shaped the opportunities he had in his career, and the impact of social media on body image.
“Did my dad ring up the BBC and said I demand that you give me a show with my son? Clearly not,” said Snow in the episode. “But am I still a nepo baby? Absolutely, but the reason for that is far more insidious and structural and difficult to solve than the moment someone at the BBC had an idea to do a show with my dad.”
Helen Banard, associate director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, also joined Janmohamed to talk about what poverty looks like in 21st century Britain towards the end of the episode. Janmohamed told PodPod that she plans to have a range of different voices in the podcast, including ones that aren’t as well known.
“There will be some very familiar names but also people who bring different perspectives to us because they might come from different parts of the country, they might have different life experiences that perhaps don't have the hundreds and thousands or millions of followers, but actually bring a fresh perspective to the conversation,” she said. “It’s really important to me that the podcast delivers its promise of different voices and different platforms and introducing those into the conversation.”
This podcast is part of Global’s successful slate of expert-led original podcasts, which includes The News Agents presented by journalists Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall and Sweeney Talks led by investigative journalist John Sweeney.
Janmohamed told PodPod that it was a “brilliant experience” to work with Global, and that they gave her the freedom to set the agenda, parameters, and pick the news stories covered in the podcast.
“It lives up to the promise that this is about bringing a fresh perspective because it's not within an existing framework,” said Janmohamed. “You know, it's not necessarily about the status quo stories, it’s really about me saying: You know what, I think these are the really interesting things we need to talk about and this is the approach I would like to take.”
