They Knew Which Way to Run

11/03/2023

Thank you to for having us in this week! While we did not win our DIY Podcast category, we absolutely felt like winners and had an amazing few days. We met a ton of incredible podcasters (including and ), had so much fun sightseeing, and ate plenty of good food. Thank you everyone for your constant support! We are so proud of how far we’ve come in the last year!

07/03/2023

The Ambies Awards are TONIGHT! Tune in at 6pm PST to watch the event live-streamed, and keep your fingers crossed for us! 🤞

LIVE SHOW DETAILS The Ambies® - Awards for Excellence in Audio The third annual Ambies® will be held at the International Theater in Las Vegas and streamed LIVE on Amazon Music channel on Twitch on March 7, 2023. Visit IMDB to check out the nominees! OUR 2023 HOSTLOS ANGELES, CA, JANUARY 23, 2023....

21/02/2023

Did you know our podcast was featured on Today??

On the cover is Ansuiya Bai of and she gave us the quote that is our finale's episode title: "The Fighters Might Die; The Fight Never Will."

Link in our website and watch out for a new series we’re launching this week: Lessons from Bhopal. We’ll be talking about the parallels we see in 2023 to 1984, starting with the toxic gas leak in East Palestine, OH.

06/02/2023

This Friday 2/10, Harvard’s South Asian Law Student Association will be listening to our first episode: One Winter Night (streaming wherever you get your podcasts)! Co-host 2L Apoorva Dixit will do a FAQ after and there will be Indian lunch!

They Knew Which Way to Run is a podcast on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy - the worst industrial disaster in history - and the survivor-activists who created a movement to turn tragedy into triumph. It was recently nominated for the Podcast Academy’s Award (alongside , , and more)! Apoorva is from Bhopal, she went back to understand the collective memory of a disaster that no one seemed to talk about, and this podcast is the result, years in the making!

Come listen and learn with us

31/01/2023

We are SO excited to share that They Knew Which Way to Run has been nominated for The Podcast Academy's Ambies Award!!! Winners will be announced March 7!

DIY Category is for indie podcasts that cost less than $3K per episode, which made us chuckle because our entire series cost a couple hundred bucks. That is only because we are so lucky to have such amazing friends who donated their talent and time to our podcast. First and foremost, thank you to Quinn Mulroy for associate producing and sound editing the entire series! Thank you to Shreya Joshi for our marketing, Derek Renfroe for our music, Amey Zhang for our cover art, Liliana Brusic for our website, Avi Dixit for translating and transcribing our interviews, and Julia Hamilton for copy editing our scripts! And a big thank you to our voice actors.

Of course none of this would be possible without the Bhopalis who shared their stories: Rasheeda Bi, Nasreen Bi, Shahzadi Bi, Sathu Bhai all of The Bhopal Medical Appeal, Apoorva's dad, Apoorva’s grandfather, and so many more.

As Memphians, we cannot ignore the context of the world around us. We stand in solidarity with and our hometown. Our podcast is about the power of organizing and passing on the wisdom of Bhopali elders to the next generation in our fight for justice. Bhopal teaches us we are the people we’ve been waiting for to imagine and create a new world that breaks these cycles of systemic violence.

02/12/2022

Today is the 38th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy - history’s worst industrial disaster.

Caused by an American pesticide factory (now Dow Chemical), 10 to 20,000 Bhopalis died on December 2, 1984. But compensation was paid for less than 3000 deaths.

The survivor-activists are still actively demanding their rights today. The Indian Supreme Court is set to hear their case in the upcoming months to correct the death toll. The Bhopal Medical Appeal activists are headed to Delhi to protest today!

Amplify their stories by sharing this story, donating, or learning more about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy from our podcast: https://theyknewwhichwaytorun.com/
or Apoorva's TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJmVxEaft8E.

16/10/2022

Thank you Harvard Law School for the amazing article on our podcast!

As a friend said, it’s a radical thing to share history that is (purposefully) left out of history books. Thank you to everyone who has listened / is listening about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and the survivor-activists of Bhopal!

To help us grow, please be sure to rate us on Spotify, review us on Apple Podcasts, or share!

Harvard Law School student Apoorva Dixit gives voice to survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy in a seven-part podcast series and TEDx Talk.

25/07/2022

This past spring, I had the fortune to give a TEDx Talk based on my research and podcast on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Selected as an Editor’s Pick by for “represent[ing] valuable and timely ideas for our global audience” of 35 million subscribers, it finally just released on YouTube 3 days ago, and I cannot believe it is already at 29K views! It is called “What Does It Mean to Survive a Disaster?” Link in bio and story.

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is the biggest disaster you've never heard of, and after having spent years thinking about it, I still cannot fully wrap my brain around the depth of the destruction and death it caused. It was incredibly painful having to memorize these deeply tragic sentences for this talk. But it was also healing.

There is power in remembrance. It begins to give respect back to the thousands of gas victims and gas survivors, including my father, whose stories were discarded, and it will make sure Bhopal does not happen again.

If you like this Talk and would like to learn more about Bhopal, tune into and my 7-episode podcast called "They Knew Which Way to Run," available wherever you get your podcasts and our website: www.theyknewwhichwaytorun.com

28/06/2022

OUR FINAL EPISODE IS OUT TODAY!

Sometimes, even remembering Bhopal feels simultaneously like too much and not enough. Yes, it is painful. Yes, there were so many lives lost. But there is power in remembrance. It is healing, and it begins to give back the respect to the survivors whose stories have been discarded by the world.

What a journey this podcast has been. We truly cannot believe we made it. Even though the series is over, we’ll still be making sense of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and everything it has to teach us for a long time to come.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen. And if you’d like to support us, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, post about us on social media, or donate to the NGOs linked on our website in our bio.

(P.S. Yes, Apoorva was recording in a walk-in closet to avoid any echo in the recordings!)

28/06/2022

The final part to the story of this podcast, just as this monumental project finishes !

28/06/2022

Part two of our story! catch the full thing in the podcast, Episode 7 of which launches in the morning !

28/06/2022

In the lead-up to our final episode release tomorrow morning, we wanted to start a carousel telling the story of this podcast and it's creators. Here is the first part!

22/06/2022

GET EXCITED!!! The last installment and finale of They Knew Which Way to Run is just one week away!!
What are you looking forward to most?

16/06/2022

REMINDER!!! We have a Q&A Session coming up today at 5 pm - and it's virtual, free, and open to the public so there's no excuse to miss it🤨. Register now w/ the link in our bio!

Thank you again
for graciously offering to host the virtual podcast discussion. The talk will be moderated by Dr. Sienna Craig, a Dartmouth professor of Anthropology who has been Apoorva's mentor through college, for this project, and to this day.

&a

13/06/2022

Missed our Memphis Q&A session? Don't worry - we're having another one!

Women of Dartmouth has graciously offered to host a virtual podcast discussion. The talk will be moderated by Dr. Sienna Craig, a Dartmouth professor of Anthropology who has been Apoorva's mentor through college, for this project, and to this day.

The event will be this Thursday, June 16 at 5pm ET. It is free and open to the public. We hope you can join us! Register here: https://tinyurl.com/2rjf8m4h

24/05/2022

Episode 5 is out today!!

We can’t believe 5 of our 7 episodes are out!

For so many reasons - both personal and professional - this podcast means so much to us. When we decided to start working on this podcast, we had no idea that it would take us 5 years to complete. And we absolutely do not regret it. We've learned so much through this process, and hearing/reading the reactions from our audience has been so powerful. Plus, it’s been a great way to stay connected. More than 60% of our friendship has now been long-distance, and we may not have talked on the phone every week for all these years without the podcast.

There were many times where things became difficult and we wondered if we’d ever finish, but we stuck through it all these years because we KNEW we wanted to tell this story. When either of us would falter, the other would encourage them and remind them WHY we started this project in the first place - how inspiring this story is and how important it is that people hear it.

Without that encouragement, and this friendship, this podcast would not be possible. 💜

22/05/2022

Krishna Bai wasn’t a resident of JP Nagar on the night of December 2nd, 1984. She was not directly impacted that night, as those in the makeshift houses in the slums of Bhopal, when the methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.

She moved to the area in 1990, and has been a water activist for at least twenty years. Living near the lake, which had been poisoned by chemicals from the factory, she and her family suffered from sickness and disease, to the point where her husband needed surgery. Joining the fight was a non-choice for Krishna Bai.

She joined plenty of rallies, marches, and protests, some all the way to Delhi and Bombay. As a mother, her goal was to keep her children out of the fight for as long as possible for the sake of their education. She never taught them to fight, nor was she taught herself. Fighting and the strength to do so was a communal effort, necessary for survival.

Krishna Bai knows the fight is far from over. While her push for access to clean water was a win for the people affected by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, there remains the problem of compensation and provisions for treatment for the sicknesses as a result of the poisoned water.

22/05/2022

Episode 5 is coming this Tuesday, May 24!

Our latest episode will cover what’s happening in today: a parallel crisis that was brewing under Bhopal at the same time as the gas tragedy— also the direct result of the factory.

How will you be tuning in??

17/05/2022

17/05/2022

Update: Come in the main big entrance (called the Central Atrium) and use the elevators to your right to get to the 4th floor. When the doors open, directly across from the opening of the atrium is the entrance to a hallway, and we’re all the way at the end!

Don't forget to join us tonight at 6:30pm on the 4th floor of Crosstown Concourse! We'll have samosas and **mango lassis and a riveting discussion! Hope to see you there 😄

17/05/2022

Episode 5 focuses on the water crisis in Bhopal, and the activists' fight for clean water and compensation! Comment any questions you have

14/05/2022

THEY KNEW WHICH WAY TO RUN: The biggest disaster you’ve never heard of
Rasheeda Bi’s world was her makeshift house in the slums of Bhopal, India – until the night of December 2nd, 1984, when an American-owned pesticide factory called Union Carbide leaked a poisonous gas cloud that suffocated 10,000 people in one night.
They Knew Which Way to Run is a 7-episode podcast series that tells the story of those who were able to escape the destruction wrought by the gas leak and those who weren’t. It follows the gas leak from the beginning of Union Carbide’s factory all the way to the present day, telling an ongoing story that is barely known in different parts of Bhopal, let alone India and the world.
Using 80+ recorded interviews and interweaving personal reflection, conversation, and narration, Bhopali-American and Fulbright Scholar Apoorva Dixit and her childhood friend Molly Mulroy present the story of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and of the Bhopalis who were shaped but not defined by the disaster, of hope, of resilience, and of memory.

11/05/2022

We are excited to announce we’re doing an in-person podcast Q&A event in Memphis next week! If you’re in the 901, please join us!

(The event will also be live steamed)

11/05/2022

We are excited to announce we're doing an in-person podcast Q&A event in Memphis next week! If you're in the 901, please join us!

(The event will also be live streamed)

07/05/2022

We are so excited to announce that They Knew Which Way to Run has officially hit listens!
We are so grateful to everyone who has helped this podcast get off the ground and supported us along the way.
To all our listeners: thank you for taking the time to listen to this important story, and get excited for the remaining episodes!

06/05/2022

Thank you to the Loyola University New Orleans Alumni for the shout-out!

Molly Mulroy '17 recently launched a podcast entitled, "They Knew Which Way to Run," which tells the story of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and what it means to survive a disaster. Check it out here: https://theyknewwhichwaytorun.com/. 📻

26/04/2022

Episode 4 is out!

Give it a listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen! (The link is also in our bio.)

26/04/2022

Episode 4 is out!!

Give it a listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen!



https://theyknewwhichwaytorun.com/episode-4-we-were-blinded-by-the-gas/

In Episode 4, we hear the next chapter of Rasheeda Bi’s epic story, about Warren Anderson - the infamous CEO of Union Carbide - and the messy start of the compensation distribution.

26/04/2022

Don't forget to tune in tomorrow to hear Episode 4!

We'll hear the stories of survivors who fought for better wages, as well as survivors who fought against relocation after the tragedy. One of those survivors we'll hear from is Nasreen Bi, who was one of Apoorva's guides while she was in Bhopal.

PC: Francesca Moore Photography

26/04/2022

Don't forget to tune in tomorrow to hear Episode 4!

We'll hear the stories of survivors who fought for better wages, as well as survivors who fought against relocation after the tragedy. One of those survivors we'll hear from is Nasreen Bi, who was one of Apoorva's guides while she was in Bhopal.