Over 30 years in journalism, news anchor and podcaster Mishal Husain has talked to princes and prime ministers, CEOs and Nobel laureates, rock stars and refugees. Visiting Princeton for the first time, she will put herself in the interviewees’ chair to discuss the challenges and craft of her 30 years in journalism. From the aftermath of 9/11 to the Arab uprisings, writing a family memoir of South Asia and launching The Mishal Husain Show podcast at Bloomberg, this will be a varied dialogue that takes in people and places, history, and the present day.
Mishal Husain is the host of The Mishal Husain Show, a global interview podcast from Bloomberg Weekend. She joined Bloomberg from the BBC, where she presented its leading news programme ‘Today’ on BBC Radio 4 and was a familiar face on the national TV news and the international channel BBC World. She covered elections and referendums, including Brexit in 2016, and chaired the 2024 Prime Ministerial Debate. She was also known for commentating on royal occasions, including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. In 2024, she was awarded the Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism. Her recent family memoir, Broken Threads: A Family From Empire to Independence, was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. Her children’s book, The Big Debate, will be published in March 2027.
Atif Mian is the John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics at Princeton University and director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he is co-author with Amir Sufi of House of Debt, an account of the Great Financial Crisis that was widely acclaimed for its originality and policy implications. Mian’s ongoing research studies the root causes of the economy’s long-run dependence on debt and the risks the debt supercycle poses for global stability. Mian is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a recipient of the R.K. Cho Prize in Economics, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The event is co-sponsored with the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance, the Program in Journalism, he Program in South Asian Studies and M.S. Chadha Center for Global India.