EPISODE 11: How Can Small Voices Make a Difference? with Ambassador Yvette Stevens

What drives a woman to choose the harder road — to study in Soviet Moscow when the world said go West? To wire a nation’s power grid when no one believed a woman could? To speak truth to power in the corridors of the UN and still find laughter amid life’s ironies?

In this episode of Fading Causes, Mukesh Kapila sits down with Ambassador Yvette Stevens, Sierra Leone’s first female electrical engineer, a UN veteran, and a diplomat who has lived through the Cold War, civil war, and countless battles for gender equality.

What did it take to break barriers in a man’s world? How did her faith, humour, and fierce independence carry her through decades of diplomacy and disruption? And why does she now joke about colour-coordinating her own coffin?

Watch a fearless, funny, and deeply human conversation about ambition, resilience, and what it means to stay true to yourself, even when the world keeps changing the rules.

EPISODE 10: Should A Reporter's Camera Reflect or Frame Reality? with Ximena Borrazás

What compels a woman to trade a career in marketing for war zones, famine, and frontlines of sexual violence? What drives someone to document the unspeakable — not just to inform, but to demand justice?

In this searing episode of Fading Causes, Mukesh Kapila speaks with Ximena Borrazás — an award-winning photographer and filmmaker whose work doesn’t just show suffering, it confronts complicity. From the battle-scarred towns of Ukraine to the ravaged refugee camps of Tigray, she brings us face-to-face with atrocities that the world often chooses to ignore.

Why are the horrors of one war front-page news, while others vanish from view? What does it mean to be a “lucky migrant”? Can a photograph become legal evidence of a genocide — and should it?

What do we do with the pain of others once we see it?

Watch and listen.

EPISODE 9: Can We Afford Pessimism In Difficult Times? with Kul Gautam

Has the world kept its promises to children? Can the United Nations, now approaching its 80th year, reinvent itself to regain public trust? And what keeps a veteran of global service fighting for justice after decades at the heart of international diplomacy?

Host Mukesh Kapila speaks with Kul Gautam, the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, whose path from a remote Nepali village to the highest ranks of the UN embodies both the promise and the frustrations of multilateralism.

Gautam reflects on a career spent championing children’s rights, navigating bureaucracies, and grappling with inequality across continents.

The conversation ranges from the struggles of his early life and improbable ascent to encounters with presidents, Nobel laureates and cultural icons.

But at its core lies a pressing question: in an era of fractured politics and fading faith in institutions, can the ideals that shaped Gautam’s life still inspire the world today?

Listen.