Join us on a wild journey through the revolution that has reshaped our world….
Revolution 1 is a podcast dedicated to telling the gripping story of the Tunisian Uprising through the voices of people who lived it.
2020 marks 10 years since a young fruit seller set himself on fire in a tiny Tunisian town, and sparked a revolution that would reshape his country, and the world. The Arab Spring catalyzed many of the major issues gripping the headlines: the Syrian war and the emergence of ISIS; the European refugee crisis and subsequent rise of right-wing nationalism across the West; social media movements and disinformation; the growing authoritarianism in Russia and Turkey; the increasingly violent struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. A decade on, we're living through the largest era of mass protest in human history, and there's no sign of it slowing down. Many of those mass protests look to the successes of the Arab Spring for inspiration — a popular uprising fueled by social media activism — but the first (and only successful) revolution of the era is often overlooked. We wanted to change that.
We spent months on the ground in Tunisia interviewing key players and everyday people who, armed with nothing more than rocks and facebook, brought down the dictator Zine el Abedine Ben Ali. And now we are bringing their stories to you.
We follow high schoolers-turned spies on a nail-biting mission to ferry video out of a blockaded city; a blogger who became the voice of the revolution in four languages as she steps out from behind her keyboard to document police brutality; and young lovers whose romance was cemented on the barricades, then torn apart by an arrest and weeks of torture. There's a yacht heist, gangsters, WikiLeaks cables, snipers, underground facebook groups, and families dealing with the uncertainty we all face: joblessness, access to education, how to keep a business afloat. We build in deeply researched context and analysis to help our listeners make sense of the stories and connect with the characters.
The pair behind Revolution 1
Erin Brown is a multimedia journalist whose work focuses on bringing critical stories to new platforms. Erin helped launch the Wall Street Journal on Snapchat Discover and produced hundreds of stories for the platform, including an intimate documentary on the opioid crisis. As Senior Editor for Digital Storytelling at The New York Times, Erin worked with foreign correspondents to bring vibrant, personal stories to life for mobile audiences. In 2014 she covered the Ukrainian conflict, and in 2016 covered even hotter battles in the U.S. elections. She is now the Tunis correspondent for The National.
Cyrus Roedel is a researcher and historian whose work focuses on contemporary history and politics of the Middle East & North Africa. He holds a Master’s degree from NYU in Near Eastern Studies, and has dedicated his career to supporting Arab and Muslim immigrants in the U.S. Until recently, he was the preventative casework program director of the Arab American Family Support Center in Brooklyn, New York. He has lived and worked throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and speaks Modern Standard Arabic as well as the Jordanian & Tunisian dialects.
Our composer and engineer is Tim O’Keefe. Tim has scored a variety of feature films, documentaries, and film installations, including As I Lay Dying (James Franco), State of Surveillance (VICE on HBO), Raw Craft with Anthony Bourdain, Tales of Our Times (Guggenheim Museum), and AiWeiwei Introduces Turn It On_ China on Film. He co-founded Freedom Beat, a social justice organization focused on the role of music in global nonviolent civil resistance movements.
Want to know more? Get in touch!
You can always reach us at erinclare.brown or cyrusroedel [at] gmail.com