May 1, 2024
Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day.
Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls
Ali Velshi is an award-winning journalist, host of “Velshi”, Chief Correspondent for MSNBC, and a weekly economics contributor to NPR’s “Here And Now.” He has covered multiple U.S. Midterm and Presidential elections and significant news stories around the globe, including extensive reporting from Ukraine and across Central and Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion, the Syrian refugee crisis from Turkey and Jordan, the Iran Nuclear Deal in Tehran, the Greek debt crisis in Athens, and the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He hosts the “Velshi Banned Book Club” on MSNBC, and the “Velshi Banned Book Club” podcast. Velshi is known for his immersive on-the-ground reporting and his interactive discussions with small groups, which form part of his ongoing series, Velshi Across America. He previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera America and CNN. Born in Nairobi and raised in Toronto, Velshi holds a degree in Religion and an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Canada’s Queen’s University. He serves on the boards of the National Constitution Center, the Chicago History Museum, the X-Prize Foundation, and the Philadelphia Citizen. Velshi is the author of Gimme My Money Back and The Trump Indictments, co-author of How to Speak Money and the upcoming Open Space (2025). Velshi has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards and is the recipient of two National Headliner Awards and a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award.
A captivating family history that illustrates how small actions
can have an outsized political impact.
Small acts of courage matter. Sometimes, they change the world. Our
history books are filled with the stories of those who fought for
democracy and freedom—for idealism itself—against all odds, from
Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
These iconic struggles for social change illustrate the importance
of engagement and activism, and offer a template for the battles we
are fighting today. But using the right words is often easier than
taking action; action can be hard, and costly.
More than a century ago, MSNBC host Ali Velshi’s
great-grandfather sent his seven-year-old son to live at Tolstoy
Farm, Gandhi’s ashram in South Africa. This difficult decision
would change the trajectory of his family history forever. From
childhood, Velshi’s grandfather was imbued with an ethos of public
service and social justice, and a belief in absolute equality among
all people—ideals that his children carried forward as they escaped
apartheid, emigrating to Kenya and ultimately Canada and the United
States.
In Small Acts of Courage, Velshi taps into 125 years
of family history to advocate for social justice as a living,
breathing experience—a way of life more than an ideology. With rich
detail and vivid prose, he relates the stories of regular people
who made a lasting commitment to fight for change, even when
success seemed impossible. This heartfelt exploration of how we can
breathe new life into the principles of pluralistic democracy is an
urgent call to action—for progress to be possible, we must all do
whatever we can to make a difference.
The Stand Up Community Chat is always active with other Stand Up Subscribers on the Discord Platform.
Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!