For GRAZIA’s sixth episode on season two of Preserving Palestine, I invited Hani Dajani, host of the viral podcast show Yalla Let’s Talk, to join me for this special episode, where we interview each other simultaneously.
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Being the host of a podcast show is no easy job, just ask me, or ask Hani. The Palestinian lawyer founded Yalla Lets Talk back in 2017, “before podcasting was ever a thing.” During this time, he has interviewed thought leaders, celebrities and talents from around the world, including Najwa Zebian, Karl Wolf and several more. Yalla Let’s Talk is more than just a podcast show, though. It’s grown into a media enterprise of its own, with Arab representation at the forefront.
“The concept was to try to create a show, and change the narrative of the people in the diaspora. From there, even though the concept of the YouTube show didn’t really work out, we started doing events. And we started rallying our community together, starting off in Toronto and then it started growing,” Hani tells me. “What better way to bring it back full circle, and actually just have those conversations happening one on one with people in our community all around the globe?”
Hani and I have a lot in common. We’re both podcast hosts, both working in media, both Palestine, and both trying to change the narrative for our communities. The main difference is that he’s doing it in Canada, which is definitely no easy task.
Both of Hani’s parents are from Yaffa, and after the annexation of Palestine in 1948, his grandparents moved to Kuwait, where he was eventually born. Hani tells me that he was born with a “watheeqa,” which he claims the easiest way to describe it to someone that didn’t understand, would be to say he was a refugee. “If I say that to my parents, it would be interpreted as something very negative. But if you think about it, we didn’t really have a home or a place. I think my parents realised at that point, the hurdles and the barriers you’re gonna have as someone without a passport. And it can be hard to say, because, you expect everyone to have some sort of nation that they belong to, and a passport and a country that will protect them.”
One of my favourite things I learnt about Hani was his ability to multitask and jungle what seems like a million things at once. He runs Yalla, a media network, hosts the Yalla Let’s Talk podcast, and somehow still manages to be a full-time lawyer. “What I find remarkable in 2023, is that you can wear so many different hats: you can be a CEO, an author, a lawyer, a doctor… Maybe not a lawyer and a doctor at the same time,” he jokes. “For me, it’s just learning how to manage my time and building a team that is able to support all of these things. So it’s fun, especially when you enjoy the work that you’re doing. You find the time for it,” he continues.
As for myself, I have to admit that this was the first time I’ve ever been interviewed, and I couldn’t have asked for a better interview. One of my favourite questions that Hani asked me was in regards to how I measure the success of a podcast episode. It was then that I realised, whilst clicks, likes and shares are great for the ego, measuring a quantifiable success of the Preserving Palestine podcast was impossible. Why? Because it depends on what you classify success as, and for this specific podcast, I quantify it as raising awareness. That is something you cannot measure, but that doesn’t stop me from hoping that each episode is successful in making a difference.
