Widemindedness with Victoria Ball

Dr Amal Marogy is an academic and social entrepreneur. Her key expertise is in Christianity in the Middle East and the preservation of endangered cultural heritages. She herself grew up as part of a religious and ethnic minority community in Iraq, before the country was ravaged by war. War claimed the life of some of her closest relatives and decades later, another relative was held hostage by the so-called Islamic State. She works to foster intercultural dialogue and is interested in a range of issues affecting the modern Middle East. Her media presence is truly international, as she has spoken everywhere from Hong Kong to Washington DC. In the UK, she appeared in The Times and on the BBC, talking about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Dr Jonathan-Pearson Stuttard is a public health physician and epidemiologist at Imperial College London. His research looks at non-communicable disease epidemiology, using big data to simulate health, economic and inequality outcomes which informs public health policy. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report in 2018. He is the Vice Chair of the Royal Society for Public Health and the Head of Health Analytics at Lane, Clark and Peacock. He has just co-authored a book called 'Whose Health is it Anyway?' looking at the impact of COVID 19 on public health.

Tahir Shah is a prolific best-selling author and film-maker. His thirty-year career has produced more than forty highly acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, as well as numerous documentaries and screenplays, and a massive body of journalism, scholarly articles, and photography. Describing himself as an ‘Enthusiast and Adventurer,’ Tahir has spent his professional life searching for the hidden underbelly of lands through which he travels. In doing so, he often uncovers layers of life that most other writers hardly even realise exist. With a world-wide following, Tahir’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages, in hundreds of editions. His documentaries have been screened on National Geographic TV, The History Channel, Channel 4, and in cinemas the world over. The son of the writer and thinker Idries Shah, Tahir was born into a prominent Anglo-Afghan family, and seeks to bridge East with West through his work. Passionate about the changing face of publishing, he established his own media business, Secretum Mundi Ltd., which represents all his projects.

Josh and Carolyn Thomas live on a 40-acre homestead in the mountains of North Idaho. They raise all their own meat, and produce most of their own dairy, fruit and vegetables using all-natural methods. The couple are passionate about the benefits of homeschooling their nine children. Together they founded and run Homesteading Family, which provides videos, tutorials and classes to inspire and help others to move towards a healthier and more abundant homesteading lifestyle. Their YouTube channel and Facebook page together have nearly half a million subscribers and followers.

Josh and Carolyn Thomas live on a 40-acre homestead in the mountains of North Idaho. They raise all their own meat, and produce most of their own dairy, fruit and vegetables using all-natural methods. The couple are passionate about the benefits of homeschooling their nine children. Together they founded and run Homesteading Family, which provides videos, tutorials and classes to inspire and help others to move towards a healthier and more abundant homesteading lifestyle. Their YouTube channel and Facebook page together have nearly half a million subscribers and followers.

Sophia Money-Coutts is a journalist and author who spent five years studying the British aristocracy while working as Features Director at Tatler. Prior to that she worked as a writer and editor for the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail in London, and The National in Abu Dhabi. She’s a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph and the Evening Standard, and often appears on radio and television channels talking about important topics such as Prince Harry’s wedding and the etiquette of the threesome. She’s published three novels, The Plus One and What Happens Now?, and The Wish List. We recorded our conversation earlier this summer. 

“Widemindedness means being not just respectful of others, not just seeking to understand others, but to celebrate the otherness in other people, and I hope that they will celebrate the otherness in me.”

Dr Edward Kessler is Founder Director of the Woolf Institute and a leading thinker in interfaith relations, primarily Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations. In 2007 Dr Kessler was described by The Times Higher Education Supplement (London) as “probably the most prolific interfaith figure in British academia” and in 2011 was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to interfaith relations. Kessler regularly appears in the media commenting on religion and belief issues of the day, most recently presenting a BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled 'We do do God' (2019), is a regular contributor to the Woolf Institute blog and hosts the podcast 'Encounter'.

"I definitely wish that more people in the zoo field were more wideminded about how best to provide care for animals in captivity." 

Husband and wife team, Jeff Harwell and Courtney Palmer, are zookeepers, who specialise in getting up close and personal with the animals with whom they work. They work at the Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Camp Verde, Arizona, which is the most free-contact facility in the world. Jeff is the departmental manager of the core group of animals, which consists of large carnivores. He can be found on most afternoons jumping into pools with adult tigers. Courtney is manager of the ungulate department, overseeing giraffes and zebras at the park amongst other hooved animals! Jeff describes himself as a conservative, Republican, Texan, Christian hunter. Courtney describes herself as a liberal, Democratic, Pennsylvanian, vegetarian agnostic.

“I was the first person in the UK, virtually, to get Coronavirus really badly, and to be whipped into hospital and to be extremely ill for seven weeks, five weeks in an induced coma, having a tracheotomy and on a ventilator, and tubes everywhere."

The Spectator has called Robin Hanbury-Tenison OBE “the doyen of British explorers.” He is also a conservationist, broadcaster, filmmaker, author, campaigner and farmer. Actress Joanna Lumley has called him “a matchless man.” In 2020, just weeks before the global lockdown in response to Coronavirus, Hanbury-Tenison’s latest book ‘Taming the Four Horsemen - radical solutions to defeat pandemics, war, famine and the death of the planet’ was published. Robin spent seven weeks fighting for his life, after testing positive for COVID-19.

He is President of the charity Survival International, which he founded in 1969, and was previously Chief Executive of The Countryside Alliance. In 1957, Hanbury-Tenison became the first person to travel overland by jeep from London to Sri Lanka. In 1958, he became the first to cross South America overland at its widest point. He visited 33 Indian tribes in Brazil at the invitation of the Brazilian government. The list of his expeditions goes on to number over 30 in total. He was one of the first campaigners to bring the plight of the rainforests to the world's attention.

"I think people are looking for three things: purpose, love and belonging."