I have a love-hate relationship with podcasts.
This is probably an awkward admission for someone who now has an interview show.
I have dabbled with podcasts in various iterations over the last decade and I have always understood their power. There is something remarkable about giving two people enough time to properly interrogate an idea, without having to squeeze everything into a 30-second soundbite.
But I have also wondered whether we have reached a point where we simply have too many conversations.
There are hours and hours of people talking to each other every day. Everyone has a microphone. Everyone has an opinion. And, increasingly, everyone seems to have a podcast.
A lot of those conversations go nowhere.
Some have done considerably worse than that. You only have to look at the influence of the manosphere to understand that long-form conversation is not inherently enlightening. Give a bad idea three hours, a good microphone and an algorithm and it can travel very far.
So when we started thinking about The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter, I had to make a case to myself, before I could make one to anyone else.
Why should we talk to each other?
And, more importantly, why should you give me an hour of your week to listen?
The answer, I realised, is actually central to what we are trying to build at The Debrief Network.
Our job is to make sense of the world.
Sometimes we do that by explaining an election, interrogating a politician or unpacking a complicated news story.
But sometimes making sense of the world requires sitting across from someone interesting and asking: How do you think?
That became my value proposition.
I wanted to bring people into the studio who could help me understand something I did not understand before. News makers, friends, change makers, people building things and people challenging the way we think about things.
There is admittedly something selfish about it. I get to pick people’s brains for a living.
And there are few brains I have wanted to pick more than Aliyah Allie’s.
Aliyah is one of those people who seems to spew innovation. Her brain appears permanently occupied by the question of how something could work better.
Today, she leads X, bigly labs, the innovation engine inside Dis-Chem that is working on how one of South Africa’s biggest health retailers can rethink the way people experience healthcare.
It is a big job. It involves technology, data, artificial intelligence, digital platforms and redesigning systems inside a huge legacy business.
But that isn’t actually why I wanted to talk to her.
I met Aliyah when she was still a management consultant at a global firm, long before X, bigly labs became part of her biography.
And somewhere along the way, our stories intersected in a way I didn’t expect.
Her mother sold samosas and koesisters to help raise her family. My mother did the same.
There is something about growing up watching people work like that.
You understand very early that nobody is coming to rescue you.
But you also develop complicated ideas about success.
How hard are you supposed to work?
When does ambition become enough?
How do you walk into rooms that were never designed with you in mind and behave as though you belong there?
And what happens when the life you eventually build becomes much bigger than the one you imagined as a child?
Those are the questions that interest me about Aliyah.
Her career is objectively impressive. Before Dis-Chem, she worked at McKinsey. She studied at UCT and Columbia University. Today, she leads a team trying to rethink parts of South Africa’s healthcare system.
But CVs tell us where people went. They rarely tell us how they got there.
This episode of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter is really an extension of conversations Aliyah and I have had over the years about success, ambition, work and what it means to navigate a life that becomes bigger and more meaningful than you expected.
Surprisingly, we barely talk politics. Although, as I am constantly reminded, everything is political.
There is something political about two women whose mothers had to hustle to create opportunities for their children sitting in a studio years later and talking about leadership, ambition and building institutions.
There is something worth examining about the distance between where you start and where life eventually takes you.
And there is something powerful about being able to look backwards at that journey without pretending it was inevitable.
Perhaps that is what I want this show to be. Not another place where important people come to tell us how important they are.
I want to understand the things that shaped them. The decisions they made. The things they got wrong. The habits they developed. The ideas they changed their minds about.
I want to know how they think.
Because if you are going to give me an hour of your week, I want you to leave understanding something you didn’t understand when you arrived.
My conversation with Aliyah did that for me.
I think it will do the same for you.
Watch The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter: Aliyah Allie and let us know what you think.
