Katie Finn is a philanthropist from the United States who has traveled with volunteer organizations through different countries. During her travels, she visited Bosnia and met refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries, who are living in life-threatening conditions. These individuals are engaged in a perilous endeavor known as "the game," where they risk their lives attempting to cross into Europe in search of better opportunities. This episode was recorded in early 2021, but...

Sheraz Baloch discusses his background and perspective as a Pakistani American with roots in Balochistan. We talk about issues impacting Balochistan today, the history of the region, and what must be learned and done for a brighter future.

Watch this Episode on YouTube! https://youtu.be/AckWixGbzdQ Kennedy Horton was born in America, but from the ages of 7 to 15, he moved with his family to Sindh, Pakistan. Afterwards he moved across Thailand, China, and he now resides in Ireland. In this episode Kennedy shares a bit about his life in Pakistan, going to school and growing up there, and more. Any questions / feedback for us? Email us at [email protected] Remember to follow us on Instagram! - @pakcord Each episode of Pak-Cord...

A fantastic conversation with Dr. Shabana Mir, from Chicago, U.S., who is here to unpack some of her knowledge and thoughts about various issues affecting Muslims and Muslim women today. Shabana Mir is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the American Islamic College, based in Chicago, IL. She teaches Islamic Studies, Gender Studies, Research Methods, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Muslim American and Muslim World Literature. She is the author of...

A really thought provoking discussion about the most common challenges that affect our Pakistani youth today - lack of opportunities, fear of failure, family and parental pressure, anxiety, and more. Our guest, Mehmooda Shah from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, breaks this down with her own story, and shares her experience on dealing with obstacles, failure, and disadvantages in life. Email Mehmooda: [email protected] Any questions / feedback for us? Email us at [email protected] Remember to...

Ayesha Wahidi was born and raised in the midwest, U.S. Earlier in 2020, she moved to Korea for a teaching-abroad program. She shares her experiences in and out of Korea and her perspectives on common life struggles. Feel free to reach out to Ayesha ! [email protected] Any questions / feedback for us? Email us at [email protected] Remember to follow us on Instagram! - @pakcord If you enjoy listening to Pak-Cord, please consider supporting us on Patreon! Each episode of Pak-Cord takes...

Watch the video version of this podcast: https://youtu.be/5NSALKYBjz0 21 year old Noor-ul-Ain from Dubai went viral on TikTok after sharing her personal traumatic story of an ordinary wedding / shaadi visit to Pakistan gone wrong. Essentially , Noor and her family flew to Pakistan from dubai to attend her cousin's wedding, and unexpectedly, she found that she was getting engaged against her consent, at the age of 12, by her parents. Her TikTok video has over 1.5 million views as of this...

Bilal Junejo was born in Pakistan, but grew up living in the southern region of Africa, namely the countries of Malawi, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Bilal gives us a glimpse of his life over there, including the people, the food, and the places.

Meet Fareeha, living in Japan. She hasn't spent a lot of time in Pakistan, grew up in Saudi Arabia, and then moved to Japan for her studies to a city called Sendai, and has been living there for 9 years, currently working at a lab while pursuing her PhD. Fareeha is an avid listener of the podcast herself, and is here to tell us all about her life in Japan. A very fun discussion with jokes and insights! Feel free to follow Fareeha on Instagram - @farri1002.

NOTE: this podcast episode exists in video form on our YouTube channel. We strongly recommend watching the video version, as it has more visual context around this topic. Find the video version on our YouTube channel or use the following link: https://youtu.be/D4cL62ulDDc Recently TikTok and other social platforms have exploded with viral memes of Pakistani kids taking pledges on stage at a school event. Popular lines include: "To sacrifice my own life for Pakistan!" "I pledge to be a pilot,...

Meet Anam Khan, a Pakistani American currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, U.S. She has moved back and forth between Pakistan and U.S. and spent a significant time living in both countries. Anam is here to talk about her startup effort, called The NewsRun, which is a free daily newsletter providing short and simple summaries of all the top news in Pakistan. In the episode Anam discusses how she came up with idea, her daily work process, managing work-life balance, and working in...

Satir Ahmed is a 22 year old history buff (fan) currently living in Newfoundland, Canada, for his studies. He has also lived the majority of his life in Qatar. Newfoundland is an island off the east coast of the North American mainland. The capital of Newfoundland is St. John's. The island got global coverage earlier in 2020 when a historic blizzard pounded the city with 30+ inches of snow (dubbed "snowmageddon"). In the episode Satir talks about life in Newfoundland, and shares his...

Here's our first discussion captured in video form and uploaded to our YouTube channel (search for Pak-Cord). Mostly discussed in Urdu, in this episode we (guest: Hamza Farooq from Miami, FL) explain the pros and cons of an audio podcast and a video podcast, and why Pak-Cord is primarily an audio-only podcast. We discuss current events including the flood situation in Karachi and some relief causes that you can donate to; we also share tips on pursuing education and careers. YouTube link for...

We bring back our old "Do Takkay" squad from episodes 48 and 49 - Myrah Shafiq, Manahill Shafiq, and Hamza Farooq, to discuss the great Elephant surrounding Pakistan's entertainment industry: Ertugrul. Ertugrul is a popular Turkish show based on the rise of the Ottoman Empire. After PM Imran Khan promoted the show to Pakistanis, the government-owned PTV channel started airing episodes of the show in Urdu dubbing. The show became instantly popular, and extremely well-received by the majority...

Several old and new guests come together to share monologues ("love letters") to Pakistan, to celebrate August 14, 2020. Celebrate with us by tuning in !

In this episode we want to shine a light on teen mental health. 3 teenager suicides took place around June of this year, one after another. All of these suicides were linked by authorities to a popular video game called Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) responded by putting a temproary bank on the game on July 1st, calling it "addictive, and waste of time". The ban was lifted a few weeks later, but it had already started a flurry of...

A love story from Canada, featuring married couple Sana and Will Saleh. Sana is of Pakistani background, born and raised British Columbia, Canada. Her husbad Will is a born and raised Canadian and a convert/revert to Islam. In this 50-minute episode, Will and Sana share the story of how they met each other, how Will decided to convert from Atheism to Islam, getting her traditional Pakistani parents on-board with the idea of the mariage, and how they got to where they are; happily married...

20 year old Myda Baig from Lahore is a Psychology student, and she's here tell us to stop wasting time ! Too many people are spending their days binging one movie after another, or lazing around, or not having any kind of short-term plan for success. Myda believes in having a properly structured day, with time allocated for productive work, family, reflection, sleep, and fun. "I practice what I preach," she says - she sleeps at 9 pm and wakes up around 4 AM, and that early-morning schedule...

Meet Hina Husain, 32 year old living in Canada, here to tell us her life story, especially a major part of her life that involves marriage. Hina had a very nontraditional marriage, because she did not get married to a Pakistani man, or a Muslim man, as most Pakistani girls do. She married an Indian Hindu man, named Sai, who she met nearly 10 years ago. In the rest of this episode Hina tells us the story of how she met Sai, how they began dating and the relationship progressed, how her family...

We speak to someone not actually from Pakistan. She's not of Pakistani descent either, yet she has built a connection to the country. Our guest is Dana Wang. Dana is a travel enthusiast, photographer, and food addict from Australia. She also studied Law and recently graduated and got her first full-time job in Sydney. She's visited Pakistan twice and made several friends there. A lot of her posts and stories on Instagram are related to her experiences in Pakistan. We get to know Dana a little...

Meet Arifah, 22 year old from England. She's here to talk to us about various things, but mostly about her most passionate subject: Food. She even wrote her dissertation on food! Arifah was born in England, moved to Saudi Arabia at a young age, then Italy, and then back to England. Although she's never lived in Pakistan, she says she has a 'very desi family', and is very well connected with her desi roots. Got feedback? Email us at [email protected] or DM us on instagram (@pakcord)!

We speak to a number of Pakistani youngsters from Islamabad, Karachi, U.K., and U.A.E. to ask them : can you count to 100, in Urdu? Turns out, it's not so easy, and as we collectively become more efficient with English, it seems we are losing the edge on our native tongues (Urdu, Punjabi, etc.) overall.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns across the world, we wanted to catch up with our Pakistani community on Discord and ask them how they're doing. As you might have heard from previous episodes, we run a discord server which is basically a modern online chatroom service, that allows both text and voice chats. We speak to several people from various places, including UK, Canada, Dubai, Pakistan, and combined their thoughts to create this episode. We ask them questions about their...

Guest: Aisha Khan, 19 year old from Toronto, Canada Aisha is here to talk to us about poetry, among other things. Aisha is a published writer and last year she released a book called Zamana, under her pen name Anaa Gulzar. We talk to her about her inspiration, why poetry is important, what are the habits for creativity, is rap real music, and a dissection of one of her poems. Follow Aisha on Instagram: @akhancept (personal) and @anaagulzar You can find her book Zamana via Amazon :...